The Nameless Sword Saga: The Protectors
by Traveling East
Summary: Kagome,the Protector of Sesshoumaru's nameless sword, is thrown into a world of secrets and magic.Together, the man and girl must unlock the secrets of the sword, expel the sinister demon back to the underworld, and save the unknowing world in the process
1. Land of the Rising Sun

**1**

**Land of the Rising Sun**

_Dawn begins to break over the horizon. The valley is bathed in the woeful velvet of night, but already the heavy mists have burned away into the heavens above. There is hardly a sound upon the harmonious breeze. It is rifling the blades of grass, waving the land like a sea. _

_On the dark side of morning he inhales, long and deep. The potent tang of grass invades his nostrils until the smell of damp soil permeates and overrides. He can almost taste the stars, clean, bright, and hidden above. Rain is on the wind, far away and to the east._

_When he shifts the metal and leather bindings creak and crack and there is a faint, fleeting ring, crystal clear and jubilant. He can hear the slide of his clothes as they flutter in the wind. The gravel beneath his toes grinds into rock when he breathes. Though he doesn't move, he is disturbing the grass, and the change sends a cacophony of rustling onto the breeze. _

_His eyes watch the sun rise. _

_And when it breaks over the black of his valley, his domain, illuminates him in brilliant hues, he is luminous. _

_He smiles and raises the hand that commands armies, has made men fall before his power, has built a kingdoms from blood. Behind him, rising out of the dipping sea of green, a thousand warriors bathed in gold. _

_And when he gestures, so faintly it almost goes unseen, the glinting warriors, painted with armor and honor move as silently as the day has risen, overtake the horizon. _

_He is left, watching the movement, the odyssey of war. _

_But he is not alone in his bright, commanding sin. _

_Flanked by two, he stands. _

_Together, stronger than his entire army, are the three._

_They watch battle unfold and see the earth weep red. _

_In the aftermath of greatest destruction the white prince leads them to hell._

_Crippled by duty, they are tied to fate._

_Forgotten by history, they fade from memory. _

_And in the land of the rising sun they burn away for preservation's sake._


	2. Marble Floors

_**AS OF 4/13/08 I AM EDITING AND REWRITING EARLY CHAPTERS OF THIS STORY. STORY FLOW AND CONTENT BETWEEN CHAPTERS WILL BE DISTURBED. SORRY. I WILL INCLUDE THE DATE AT THE BEGINNING OF EACH NEWLY EDITED CHAPTER.**_

* * *

All of these clouds will disappear

Like we were never here

But I swear there was a time

I thought that it would never stop

And now I only think about you

if it's raining or it's not

-The Weepies, _Jolene_

**2**

**Marble Floors**

The halls of the museum were studiously and diligently silent. The only sound within the quiet place came from a young woman charging brusquely through the corridors. She was in a frenzied hurry, distracted, absent, almost unaware of the noise her very expensive black heels thundered on marble floors. She was almost embarrassed by the racket she caused.

_Almost_. But, she had told herself that morning (as she realized the error of her wardrobe), her shoes were far too trendy and complimentary to her outfit for her to feel true remorse. And though she had constantly reminded herself of this, it _was_ a bit difficult to think through all the noise.

But what did it matter now anyway? No one was around. No sense feeling guilty now. It was after hours. The only people around were too ensconced in their research or whatever it was they did behind mahogany doors to notice her footwear and the tumult she caused. Her boss had yet to leave for the night though. There was still time to turn someone's mood sour, and with her luck it was likely to be he whom she bothered.

But as she hurried on, stalwartly ignoring the whole predicament surrounding her footwear, she relaxed by degrees. The halls that housed the exquisite art of the private collection were dim and hollow, empty.

So everyone had gone home. And once again, she was working overtime.

Fantastic.

Passing by a large, picture window she caught sight of her haggard expression and the frown that seemed permanently fixed around her mouth. If she weren't careful her job would be to blame for both premature wrinkles and the complete surrender of her soul.

A dejected sigh passed her lips as she rounded yet another corner, managing to slide a little on the slick floor as she did. Life here would be so much easier if she didn't feel so damn incompetent.

But working at a place for three years could do that to hopeful young workers out to conquer the world. When she had first arrived at the museum steps she wasn't even paid. It had been three long, grueling months of interning. And to this institution interning meant numbering papers and making copies. She had learned rather quickly that around here, they meant serious business when it came to photocopying and organizing and stapling. At the end of three months, in which she was run ragged and sustained several grievous injuries from a temperamental stapler, she decided that, yes, she could put up with bullshit and, yes, she could handle a position at this establishment.

Woe to the hopeful college student, too vainglorious to see her own demise.

She had been painfully thrilled to work within her intended field of study. But as three months turned into six and six into twelve and twelve into three years, she was now disenchanted and disappointed.

_Three years_ of work for this place and she was just barely above that of a medieval page. She still made all the copies, got all of the curators and donators coffee, and still fought the urge to break down and cry every time she made the smallest mistake. At least she wasn't numbering artifacts anymore. God, that had been terrible.

But then again, she mused darkly, the idea of actually being able to handle artifacts was much more thrilling than being a glorified secretary.

She sighed again, unconsciously losing some of her posture. She always thought like this when she wasn't tearing her hair out trying to reload paper into the printer or attempting to soak out coffee stains from her blouses during lunch breaks. With too much time to think, unattainable goals haunted her like ghosts, mocked her as she walked the corridors.

But there was no more time for self-pity this evening, and as she neared her destination she summoned for her courage and, predictably, grasped at nothing. Slowly, quietly, as if she were afraid of being heard, she slipped into a large oak door at the end of one darkened hallway lined with expensive paintings.

Once inside, she had to fight the urge not to burst into tired giggles. Every time she was in the head curator's office, she felt as if she were on a movie set of a boarding school. The room was decorated in oak paneling and the walls were lined with bookshelves filled with more anthologies than one person could read in a lifetime. She had wondered, on more than one occasion, if he had ever read them, or only kept them to appear wise and impressive.

It was dim and dated inside, as if the place should have been lit by candles or gaslights instead of electricity.

Tiredly, she decided this would suit the snobby, elderly curator. She could already picture him in a smoking jacket with a fat cigar and martini in one hand, and an ancient but altogether cliché treasure map in the other.

Currently, the old gentleman was standing next to one of his many bookshelves, leafing through a text that looked older than most of the objects on display in the museum. He was a short man, but not near as diminutive as she. At a little over five feet her greatest aspiration in regards to height was to stand taller than the middle schoolers who passed by the museum every morning on their way to school.

Giving herself a sharp mental shake, she returned her attention to her boss, diligently ignoring her in favor of his text.

Clearly it was a page-turner.

Her eyes rolled skyward before landing on him again.

He had a sort of dignified snobbery about him, one that had been polished and perfected throughout the years. If he were not so intelligent and knowledgeable, she would have put him in his place by now. His favorite pastime was passive aggressively insulting her.

But, she always found herself begrudgingly admitting, despite the swift desire to snap at him, he had a lot to teach her. After all, she was only just out of college, and as smart as she thought she was, there was no comparison between her and Dr. Reginald Wesley.

He was, unfortunately, a genius.

She just wished he wasn't so damn cocky about it.

Shuffling her feet a little, because if her shoes weren't gorgeous they were at least painful, she hovered awkwardly at the doorway, feeling meek and bothersome. The man turned without lifting his gaze from the tome he was fixated with. The image of a martini and cigar returned with a vengeance, she bit her lip, shifted her stance again.

"Miss Higurashi," his voiced his acknowledgement carelessly, in a drawling monotone. He was bored with the very thought of her. "There are several documents in that folder on my desk." He gestured absently with his free hand, still eyeing the book. "As soon as you deliver them to accounting you may leave."

She bit harder on the inside of her lip, annoyance welling to brim at the edge of her sanity. She was not sure whether it was his absolute indifference to her existence or the fact that the accounting office was going to be closed in approximately 5 minutes that made her want to scream, wrench the book out of his hands, and take him by the shoulders, and scream, 'I'm a god damn professional you old wind bag! I am over qualified to be your little high heeled lackey!'

Instead of doing just that, she swallowed her anger, as she always did, and padded her way, rather submissively, over to his desk where the large and overly professional leather folder sat. Clammy hands gripped the folder full of papers and held it close to her chest. She made to leave, but paused haltingly.

"What is it Miss Higurashi?"

She winced at the butchering of her last name, the annoyance in his tone. Her teeth ground in a way that would have made her dentist shake his head in disapproval.

"The accounting office will be closed shortly," she began timidly, "If I can't find anyone to take the files, what would you like me to do with them, Dr. Wesley?"

In one exaggerated movement, the man placed a finger over the spot he was reading from and finally pulled his eyes away from the text. When he met her gaze, she could quite easily make out the thinly veiled dislike he held for her, made worse by the condescending lilt of his next words, "If you think that you will not be able to deliver the files then perhaps we have more serious matters to discuss. Perhaps," he paused, a single white eyebrow twitching upwards, "_perhaps_, we should discuss duties you would be incapable of completing if I were to bestow more responsibility upon you. If you think, even for a moment, that the files will not be in the hands of accounting by," he glanced at the ticking grandfather clock in the corner, "four 'o' clock this evening, then, by all means, please leave the files, have a wonderful weekend, and we will take several minutes on Monday to discuss more appropriate job situations for you."

She stared at him for a moment, debating if hitting him over the head with one of his antique candlesticks could be classified as assault in court. _But_, she wearily reminded herself, just in time to stop her legs from crossing the room to give him a kick in the shins, the best way to get under his skin was not through vehement physical harm.

Summoning her most cheerful smile, she chirped, "I can handle it, Sir. Have a good weekend, Dr. Wesley," and made for the door.He watched her slip out the office, an indifferent look clouding on his lined face, and then returned to his book, immediately forgetting her.

Outside, in a sudden rush of panic, the girl slipped off her beautifully pointed heels and ran, stocking toed, all the way to the accounting office. As she flew around the corner, arms flailing, she ran smack into the last person in the office, who was leaning down to lock the door.

"Oh!" she cried out in surprise and embarrassment, reaching out to steady herself on the unfortunate man. She felt a hand grab her elbow before she tipped over and spilled precious files all over the floor. " I'm sorry! Sorry, sorry! I had to get these files into the office for Dr. Wesley and-"

She looked up, still apologizing gracelessly, and into the face of the last person she wanted to see. A man in his late twenties looked down at her, the glare of his glasses obscuring his eyes. Even so, she could plainly read the amusement upon his countenance. His mouth twisted slightly, and it looked more of a grimace than a smile, but she guessed it was the latter.

"Miss Higurashi, what an unexpected and pleasant surprise," his cold voice held a sarcastic level of disdain that instantly raised her hackles.

"Hello," she replied gruffly, her cheeks burning.

"Did you have a reason for so unceremoniously running into me, or is this a common practice of yours on, " he glanced at his watch, " Fridays at 4:01?"

She contrived not to glare at him and help up the envelope, "Dr. Wesley asked me to give this to your office."

The man shifted slightly, his smile widening to reveal perfect white teeth, "Ah. Well, you see, you seem to have just missed our office hours."

Her shoulders dropped in weary defeat and her anger disappear, " Please, Aeron. I don't want to loose my job."

He eyed her carefully and seemed to lose his vindictive desires, because he sighed and shifted his overcoat into his other arm. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a set of keys and inserted them into the old oak door. Opening the door the man let her walk inside, a sigh escaping his lips.

"You know, Kagome, you should probably take care of your little chores before everything closes for the day."

She glowered furiously as she passed him, making sure that this time he did see the extent of her sour mood. Aeron's brow rose, lined itself with irritating condescension. He was nearly as bad as Dr. Wesley, always nettling her, giving her a difficult time. Sometimes she thought he was attempting to jest with her, but most comments that came out of his mouth were usually curt barbs that fell just on the dark, snide side of funny. They grated each other wrong, but for some odd and unexplained reason continued to speak when the occasion warranted it.

Clearly, Kagome was going insane and had settled for vague insults from a man she barely knew to supplement the lack of friendly people on the job.

Stalking further into the darkened room she slapped the file on the desk with a satisfying thump.

"I'm aware of the time and when I should complete my tasks. It wasn't my fault, but then, I'm sure that you don't care much about a little errand girl's problems."

She slid past him and out the door; leaned against the wall and slipped her heels back on. When he stepped back out and locked the door he looked down at her expectantly, but her eyes flitted away from his gaze.

"Anyway, thank you, I appreciate it," she amended honestly.

He studied her few another moment, then nodded and walked away. "Have a nice weekend," he threw over his shoulder. She almost smiled until he added, "Let's hope next week bodes better for you."

She glared at his retreating back, but was too tired to throw out a nasty return. Near her wits end she went the opposite direction, and was darkly self satisfied at the amount of noise she made on the way. She came to her tiny office, nothing more than a janitorial closet, and gathered up her coat and briefcase. After locking her door she trudged out of the museum and into the rain, not even bothering to pop her umbrella.

What was a little rain after the week from hell?

At her apartment she clumsily opened the door and dropped her things in a damp mess. Kicking off her stupid, attractive, aching shoes, which had both been sunk into muddy puddles several times, she made her way to the kitchen, stripping off her soaked black collared shirt to throw it over the couch. Padding around the kitchen table she looked around, worry creasing her forehead.

"Ajax?" she called, and her voice echoed into the dark recesses of her tiny, empty home.

A jingle of metal met her ears and her face broke into a wide smile, the first genuine one of the day. Four feet shuffled along the carpet of the hallway and a second later her short, stocky corgi came sliding into the kitchen, his back end wiggling with excessive joy.

"Good evening to you, too!" she cooed, kneeling down to ruffle his fur and envelope him in a hug. For his part, his short stubby legs bounced his squat body halfway up onto her lap and he basked in the attention.

"Were you a good boy while I was gone? Do you want your dinner?" In response the corgi danced in a circle, his nails clicking happily on the linoleum.

She felt the week melt away as she smiled down at her little mutt, making his dinner and setting it next to his water dish. Opening the freezer she poked around, wrinkling her nose at the various frozen dinners stacked at the back, each in varying stages of freezer burn. Eventually one was chosen, and she popped it into the microwave and went to play with Ajax, flipping on the TV as she sat on the floor.

"Good boy," she murmured distractedly, tossing his tennis ball down the hallway for him to fetch.

The six 'o' clock news was littered with death, mayhem, and destruction. The usual. She was only half listening anyway. Civic responsibility prevented her from foregoing it altogether, but the world was so depressing she thought maybe it would be all right if she only watched once in awhile. About to flip the channel, she paused as a new segment aired.

The first few images were stock footage of dig sites. But the story unfolded in a museum, somewhere across the world. It was something about rare finds and private collectors and anonymous buyers and the market and how to some millionaires made their money from history

"…_private collectors can make millions of dollars a year. Many prefer to remain behind the veil of lawyers and cash. But there are several who are known the world over for their interesting tastes and the amount of money they will pay for history. Several museums here in Japan have become rather lucky recipients of large, undisclosed donations and payments for rare masterpieces. Makoto Yamamato, the curator of one of the prestigious private museums on Osaka had this to say about his high profile customers_…"

Kagome watched the flickering television screen, feeling an odd pull, a brief flickering of awareness in her mind. Unblinking, she stared, detached, at odds.

"…_There are many rich men and women frequent my museum, many well to do business men who fund digs and excavations in the hopes that our teams will find priceless artifacts. Just the other day a large donation bestowed upon us by several prominent figures from Kyoto, including the Katsu, Soseki, Watnabe, and Taisho families. These are very private individuals, but I believe it is no secret that several katana collector's world wide are vying to purchase one of our latest finds at the Shikon Site…"_

The segment ended a few minutes later, but oddly, Kagome had trouble recalling the rest of the report. Somewhat befuddled and distant, strangely so, Kagome blinked back to reality. A commercial was blaring rather annoyingly at her now, and she pondered confusedly, wondering if she really was _that_ tired, to blank out an entire few minutes of her life.

But then Ajax was worming his charming way into her lap and the dull throb of a headache had her forgetting about millionaires and swords and museums and concentrating, instead, on a good night sleep.

When she slept that night, she might have dreamt about an indiscriminate shape in the dark, a sharpened line of a sword. But in the morning she didn't remember, wasn't bothered by depth of darkened sleep.

* * *

It rained all weekend long. Both Ajax and Kagome found themselves forlornly staring out into the bleak, late winter sky. Ajax longed for a walk and Kagome felt guilt-ridden every time he sat by the apartment door, staring at his leash. But outside the rain came down in icy sheets. They wouldn't have made it halfway around the apartment complex before being completely soaked.

Kagome spent most of the weekend on the couch with Ajax, channel surfing and eating cold Chinese food. It was a humdrum way to spend her two days off, but she didn't have anything better to do. She had no one to call, no one to go out to dinner with, no one to go window-shopping with, and no one to sit on the couch and watch TV with. No one except her dog, and he was already willing company.

The vague, empty lines of her apartment offered little solace from the dreary days. Many times Kagome had admitted that coming home was almost less pleasant than running around at work. The apartment was noticeably lacking welcoming warmth.

But that wasn't to say she didn't try. She bought flowers every Saturday when she went to the local grocery store. They sat, looking colorless and sad in a vase on her kitchen table. It was pretty pathetic, she decided, when a home sucked the comfort out of decorations.

She had a few pictures on the walls, some prints of artwork she admired. But it was never enough to offset the loneliness that permeated this place she lived. It wasn't the apartment so much, or the city outside her walls. It was the heavy burdens she carried in her heart that made settling impossible.

So Kagome and Ajax spent the weekend ignoring their gloomy isolation.

When she curled up in her bed on Sunday night, facing another drizzly, unhappy Monday morning, she fought the urge to cry. Night was when she worried most, the time her brain shut down and slowly picked off the things she had yet to do, the goals she had yet to accomplish, the memories she had yet to erase.

Her throat worked hard and a burning tickle disturbed her sinuses.

Pinching the bridge of her nose she managed to staunch the miserable feelings. It helped then, that she remembered the museum was expecting a new piece sometime this week and with it, the annual board of directors would be coming to examine all of the exhibits. Kagome fell asleep worrying about work rather than the withdrawn existence she lived.

* * *

Monday mornings were always the worst. Kagome could remember her clear hatred of the day as far back as grade and high school. Mondays had been terrible. Even then. She had long ago decided that they were a day designated by the universe in which cosmic justice (or injustice) was haphazardly dealt in her direction.

Anything and everything could happen on a Monday.

Like traffic jams, for instance.

She was late and it was raining and her pantyhose might have had a very unfortunate rip up the back of her leg. Hurrying into the museum, she folded up her umbrella as she entered, and inadvertently dripped rain onto the marble floors. As she shook the umbrella to remove the excess droplets, she looked out the large windows of the front of the establishment. The museum looked out on the chic and rich downtown area, where the art district met the new and old money of a city built on lazy commerce.

Expensive cars rolled by the wet streets outside, their tires splashing the sidewalk in front of the museum. A tall, dark figure weaved across the sidewalk, jumping away from the waves of street water thrown toward him. The glass doors opened and Kagome stumbled backward as Aeron pulled off his long, raincoat, splattering her neat black skirt with the oily puddle water. She glared at him as water left trail marks down her clothes.

He looked up after wiping off his suit, a look of angry displeasure contorting his features. Upon meeting her gaze his expression slackened into one of surprise. _Apparently_ he hadn't even seen her standing there. Seeing her pinched lips and furrowed brow, he glanced at her skirt and winced slightly.

"Sorry."

She set her jaw angrily, had to bite her tongue, and her shoulders hunched up to her ears. For a moment he thought she was going to swing her briefcase at his face, but instead, she turned around and walked toward her office, slipping slightly as her wet heels moved across the perfect floor, fuming, all the while thinking, _hello, Monday, nice to see you, too_.

Aeron watched her slip and slide down the hall, his head cocking to the side ever so slightly. As his glasses fogged up from the change in temperature, he suddenly became aware that he was staring at her. Glancing around in embarrassment, he swallowed, cleaned his glasses, and drifted off to his own office where Monday blues awaited him too.

* * *

As Kagome was running her various errands and filing out assorted forms of paperwork, she became aware of a foreign and long forgotten emotion zipping around through the air of the museum. Excitement. No one was ever excited around the museum. The closest emotion to exhilaration was a sort of bored interest… in a detached sort of way. But today there was this electric thrill humming through the walls and the dry talk of the curators.

The darkened corridors seemed liven every time she stepped into the hallway, and after several trips to and from Dr. Wesley's office her stomach developed butterflies. The other curators rushed around one another, talking quietly, gesturing with an ardor she had never before seen. She dared to think they were near elated. Or, she acquiesced as she covertly deconstructed Dr. Wesley's ever-present scowl, as elated as stuffed shirts could get.

While she took her lunch break at a chic little coffee shop near the museum, she wondered what had everyone in such a mood. They had been expecting a new piece for at least 4 months. She hadn't thought it was new news. But, apparently, she was missing something. As she sat on one of the uncomfortable bar stools that looked out over a beautifully manicured square, she mused silently to herself, eyes clouded.

The door of the coffee shop opened behind her and a bell above the door jangled pleasantly. Aeron stepped into the shop, and immediately removed his glasses, cleaning them with a part of his suite that was not drenched with icy water. When he put his glasses back on, his eyes were instantly drawn to the girl sitting framed at the picture window. He walked slowly over to the counter where the line weaved amongst tables of patrons, watching her out of the corner of his eye.

She was a tiny thing. Not much more than 5 feet or so. Despite her small frame and generally forced but determinedly polite demeanor, he had often been witness to the dangerous fire within her, the tensing of muscles that might have signified the recoiling of a well-aimed sucker punch. He often found it difficult not to laugh at her klutziness, her general way of handling things, and her obvious, though dampened sense of humor. She was, to sum it all up, a spitfire.

As he placed his money on the counter he glanced back at her again. She had long, wavy hair that reached down to the middle of her back. When he had the pleasure of looking into her face, he saw two large green eyes, full of spunk, set behind long dark lashes. And when she smiled, which was rare, she garnered the attention of anyone in the immediate vicinity.

Aeron wished that he had better people skills. He knew that the times he had spoken to her, he had insulted her, rubbed her the wrong way, and generally presented himself as another one of the assholes they worked with.

It wasn't that he tried to upset or hurt her. It just seemed to be the way it worked.

He nodded slightly to the barista as he was handed his coffee and sandwich. With mounting reservation he made his way over to the window, pausing awkwardly behind Kagome.

"Er- Hello," he began uncomfortably.

Kagome looked over her shoulder, dark brows furrowed in confusion. Her countenance changed as soon as she saw him. Surprise danced over her features.

"Oh, hello." She was attempting to mask her surprise, managing horribly. She turned the bar stool so that she could see him fully. "Eating lunch?"

Aeron smirked slightly and held the sandwich up before her. Her eyes narrowed slightly and he felt himself floundering.

"Yes, I am." He said, trying to wipe the aloof look off of his face, "May I sit down?" He gestured to the seat next to her.

She nodded, her stupefaction increasing to full blown bewilderment. Aeron slid down into the seat, his long legs making it an awkward fit. They sat for a moment, unsure of what to say to one another.

"We have a new piece coming in from Japan this afternoon, I hear," he finally mediated.

She looked up in disbelief, "How is it that you, an accountant, hear more about the pieces in the museum than I do?" She shook her head and stirred her coffee a little violently, "I just don't understand."

Aeron smiled slightly and unwrapped the paper around his sandwich. "I don't know. Perhaps it has something to do with seniority? Or the fact that most of the people we work with are pompous assess whose only true joy is tormenting recently graduated underlings?"

Kagome turned sharply and stared at him. He swallowed a bite of his sandwich and it slid down like a rock; he wished that he had kept his mouth shut. The degree to which he was screwing this up was incomprehensible.

But to his surprise, after a pained second of silence, she laughed.

Her frown opened and she threw back her head and _laughed_. As her chuckles grew, Aeron saw several patrons' eyes wander toward her. He noted with curiosity, a tall man in a corner, watching them with silent interest. He blinked once, dismissed it, and turned back to Kagome, who was giving him an incredulous glance as she smothered chortles behind her hand.

He smiled slightly and let his gaze wander back down at his coffee.

"It's true you know," she said, bringing her cup up to her lips, "they are pompous assess. I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so."

Aeron let out a small sigh of relief. Better, he thought to himself, better. Maybe he could do this whole chit chatting thing.

"I hate myself for asking this, but," she paused the hand stirring her beverage, "do you know what piece we are receiving? I mean, what could put even Dr. Wesley into such a brilliant mood?" Her voice was sarcastic and she rolled her eyes toward Aeron.

It was the man's turn to laugh. He coughed slightly as he choked on his coffee. Kagome reached out and thumped on his back, causing his glasses to slide down his nose and nearly into his cup.

"I'm alright," he said gruffly, trying not to laugh more. Kagome saw him attempt to cover his smile and she laughed again. After he had complete control over his lungs he spoke. "I _heard_," he tossed her a smug grin, "that we were receiving something different than Dr. Wesley was expecting. I _heard_, from one of the curators, Dr. Linus to be exact," he referred to a middle aged woman who was one of the junior curators and a woman that Kagome loathed, " that the museum is going to receive," he paused for dramatic effect and nearly broke his serious tone at the anticipation on Kagome's face, " a sword from the Shikon site."

Kagome blinked. In all honesty, she did not know much about the site, which had been in the news in recent months. Although she had once jumped on information about new sites and pieces of archaeology, now, as a glorified secretary, she hardly even worked with artifacts and had lost interest in learning about items she would, in her eyes, never have a chance to handle.

"The Shikon site?" she found herself asking stupidly.

Aeron raised a dark eyebrow behind his glasses and a wry smile twisted his face, "Aren't you supposed to be the one interested in archaeology?"

Kagome shook her head in disbelief. She could hardly believe they were having a conversation, much less that he knew more about recent developments in her profession than she.

"Yes, and I am. I love history and archeology. But, well, since I received the job at our prestigious little Worthington Museum, I've found my job description more that of secretary and less that of adventurer and museum curator. Hitherto for," she raised an eyebrow at him, inviting a smile, "I have been less and less interested in sites, items, and archeology. I find it just a little disappointing when I am not even allowed to touch the artifacts." She sighed and leaned her chin into her hand.

" I see." He murmured, picking off a tomato that was making his bread soggy. He was silent a moment and they both stared out into the rain. "I am also very interested in archaeology," he finally offered quietly.

"Are you really?"

He nodded slowly, continued to stare out into the rain. " My original plan when I entered college, all those years ago," his smile was forced, " was to become an anthropologist or archaeologist. I wasn't sure whether or not I wanted to become a professor or go into the field, but I knew that was what I wanted to do."

"How-"

He took a sip of his coffee and held up a hand to stall her question. "I was blessed with an efficiency for numbers. My father saw to it that if I were to follow my original plan, I wouldn't have any funds for college-"

"But, surely there were-"

"Awards and grants and scholarships?" He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, cast her a quick, measuring glance. "Of course. But it wasn't enough. Also," he laughed softly, caustically, "I have a horrible habit of being a snob. I was accepted Ivy league. I wanted to stay there. To my family, and to myself, at that time, prestige was everything. So, I decided that numbers weren't so bad and money and a degree from the university of pompous ass were better than going to a smaller college that I could afford. So, my plan was abandoned. Until recently that is."

"Oh! I see." Her face lit up. "That's why you are working at Worthington! You wanted to be close to what you were meant to do."

"You could say that."

The girl finished the dredges of her coffee and looked at him, "I never knew that."

"How would you?"

She shrugged, a little sheepish, and pointed her spoon at him, "True."

The man smiled and glanced at his watch, "Well, I don't know about you, but I only have an hour for lunch."

"Mmm," she took a final bite of her sandwich, nodding her dark head in assent, "Same here."

They walked out of the coffee shop, carrying on their pleasant conversation, unaware that in the back of the cafe a pair of golden eyes watched their every move.

The walk back up the block was brisk and completed in silence. Kagome smiled her thanks to Aeron as he held open the museum door, heedless of the rain dripping on his head. For the second time that day she shook her umbrella free of excess water. They were hardly in the door when the familiar sound of tapping heels met their ears and a prim looking woman in a business jacket and skirt appeared, casting them both disapproving looks. Dr. Linus stopped her quick steps and turned to address them.

"While we are not a business office and do not hold to many, if any business office rules, I would still postulate that Dr. Wesley would be most displeased to find out that an inter-museum romance was detracting from quality financing and…paper running."

Kagome bristled behind her blush and Aeron had the decency to look embarrassed. However, he recovered quickly, realizing that Kagome was of the mindset to defend herself at risk of getting fired.

"You would be hard pressed to find an inter-museum romance anywhere, least of all here. Dr. Wesley will most likely be more pleased that Miss Higurashi took time to dispel excess water from her garments so as not to jeopardize any precious documents that she might be running around with. As for myself, I am vaguely certain that numbers can wait at least two minutes while I too remove the excess water that so unceremoniously dumped itself on my head. I shudder to think of what might happen lest we track liquid through these pristine and carefully managed hallways."

"Yeah," Kagome threw in lamely.

Dr. Linus' cool gaze sharpened as she fixed the girl with her grey eyes. Kagome forced a smile and threw her still damp jacket over her shoulder.

"Well," she ground out, "I should be getting back to my paper running."

She nodded once to Aeron and hurried off down the hall, slipping on the marble floor like she had earlier that morning. Aeron felt a lopsided grin touch his lips as she turned around and mouthed 'Thank you'.

Aeron looked back at Dr. Linus who was shaking her tightly bunned head at him, her disapproving gaze bordering on condescending. Aeron shrugged at her, a smug smile finding it's way to his face. He sauntered down the hall, whistling a tune.

Kagome hung her coat up, dumped her umbrella in her chair and shot down the hallway. Fumbling in her effort to get into Dr. Wesley's office, she banged her hip against the door and stumbled into the office, already preparing herself for a snide but perfectly articulated insult… that never came.

In fact, the curator hardly noticed her late entrance. He was busy scribbling notes across papers, checking messages, thumbing through a giant book, all while shooting nervous glances at his phone.

His air of excitement that was so electric Kagome was surprised his bookshelves of ancient dried tomes did not ignite as he passed them.

When he finally noticed her, she was stupefied that his expression held the vague ghost of a smile.

"Miss Higurashi, I am glad you are here. Run these down to Dr. Linus and then meet me in our Japanese wing. Our newest piece has arrived. And, I am expecting a very important and prominent visitor, be sure the coffee is on."

He shoved a huge stack of files into her hands. Kagome staggered under the weight. She wondered how the older man had lifted them to begin with; she was having trouble simply keeping her arms up. As artfully and as gracefully as she could, she made her way back to the door, opening it with the toe of her heel. Hurrying back down the hall in the direction she had just come from, she concentrated on not losing her balance, dropping the many files in her hands, or running into any of the fine pieces that hung on the walls.

Her stomach fluttered with nervous excitement. She was surprised that this Monday was turning out so well. It had to be a fluke. Usually by now any good thing that happened was consequentially counteracted by a terrible calamity to remind her that is was, in fact, a Monday.

She was feeling pretty confident that the rest of the day might continue on without a hitch when she rounded a corner and for the second time in two weeks, walked smack into someone. Her immediate reaction was to throw up her hands and hug the files to her chest.

Which turned out to be the worst immediate reaction in the history of immediate reactions.

Several of the leather bound files slipped from her hands, falling to the floor with a loud slap. A pair of hands came up to grasp her upper arms as she slipped over the leather folders had scattered across the floor.

Looking up through the curtain of hair that had fallen into her face, prepared to apologize and then promptly drop to her knees and try to reorder the pages, she froze, her jaw dropped, and somewhere in the back of her mind she realized that this was not a regular Monday at all.

"Oh," she breathed.

The stranger before her smiled and Kagome wondered if she would later regret getting out of bed that morning.


	3. Q&A

_I have decided to upload new chapters at least once a week on Saturdays. But, I am going on spring break starting this afternoon and have no idea if I will have interent access or not, so, you get not one but two chapters early (right on!). This is also to appease you and apologize for the slow beginning... the story is taking on a life of its own and is threatening to be quite epic... Which brings me to this:_

_Thank you, **TigerZahn**, I did realize her eyes were/are brown. That is the first of many artistic liberties that I will be taking. Although I have not read all of the fanfiction out there, of the ones I have read, mine is a little different than all the rest. Or I like to think so... it appeals to my ego to think that way. Which brings me to my other point: **I do not Own Inuyasha, but, as far as I know, a lot of this story is my own. Please don't steal. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but I think in this case imitation (stealing!) would give me an ulcer.**_

_Thank you to my first six reviewers: **TigerZahn, Snappy Burns, Walking Flame, Joyful902006, The Silver Maiden, and Saviourr**. You will forever be immortalized at the beginning of Chapter three. I appreciate the reviews very much._

_AND NOW: your story_

* * *

**Chapter 3**

**Q&A**

An incredibly handsome and well-dressed man smiled down at her. He was so much taller than Kagome that she barely came up to his shoulder, if that. Light amber eyes flecked with gold stared down at her, dancing in with interest. White-blonde hair fell, in a dashingly attractive unkempt mess, creating a halo effect of white reflecting dim light, around his head. A dark suite on a lean muscular body, held proudly, perfect posture; she could tell her was not used to looking down.

"Oh! I am so sorry!" She tried to right her feet and turned awkwardly in her heels, proceeding to slip further into his grasp.

The man reacted, tightening his grip on her arms, practically hoisting her off the floor and free from the leather bound mess at and around her feet.

"Oh, Sir, I'm terribly sorry, thank you so much. I- I-" she stammered as she realized he was bending down to pick up the files "Oh, no, please, don't-"

He stood, the files neatly arranged in his large hand, extended to her. She shifted the files in her arms, preparing to reach for those he offered, balancing her burden precariously.

He laughed, a quiet deep laugh, and her eyes immediately went to his face. But she saw no trace of cruelty, only disguised amusement.

"It is no imposition and I think perhaps, you may already have your hands full." She flushed, a cold sweat immediately breaking out over her body.

"Hmm, yes, I tend to do that."

He shifted the files to the crook of his arm and turned toward the direction she had been hurrying, his hand coming to rest gently on her right arm, as if to escort her. She blinked and looked from his hand to his face and back again.

"You tend to do what? Have your hands full or run into people?"

She was at a loss for words and let him guide her down the hallway in the direction that she had been headed, before she ran into him. "Both." His quiet chuckle sounded again, echoing off the halls. "But, really, you don't need to wal-"

"Again, not an imposition, I wouldn't want you to run into anyone else. The next person might not have the superior reflexes that I possess and you could topple right out of those dangerous looking shoes you are wearing."

Kagome glanced down at her feet, "They _are_ dangerous," she huffed under her breath.

The man said nothing but she could almost feel him smile and she looked up at him, squinting, "Do I know you from somewhere? You seem familiar to me. Are you here to see Dr. Wesley?"

He glanced down at her from behind a lock of straight white hair, his confident half-smile dimming as he mulled over her questions, silence filling the space between them.

"I do not believe we have been previously acquainted. And, unfortunately, I do not know a Dr. Wesley. Is he the curator of this museum?"

She nodded her head and stopped walking. They had reached Dr. Linus' office door. "It's just right here that I needed to go to," she said, gesturing to the door on their left.

She started to walk toward the door but the hand on her arm was gently restraining, "I may not know Dr. Wesley, but may I ask your name?"

She stalled her step and regarded him carefully, "I'm Kagome Higurashi." She shifted the heavy folders and held her small hand out to him.

He reached, taking his hand from her arm to grasp the hand she extended, his face impassive. "A very pretty name. It suits you." Before she could duck her head or shift her eyes he spoke on, "Higurashi? You are Japanese?"

She blinked at him, "I- no, I am not. My stepfather was half-Japanese. I lived in Japan for a few years," she added as an after thought.

Interest flickered in his eyes, "Did you enjoy your time there?"

"Very much," was her honest reply.

His lips parted to reveal a white flash of teeth, "I reside in Japan as often as I can."

She peered up at him and her green eyes suddenly widened, realization dawning, "I knew I knew you!" She gaped at him before taking a step back, "I had no idea! Taisho-sama, my apologies!"

The billionaire treasure seeker before her smiled as she fell a confused mess, backing away from him, caught somewhere in between her western culture and her eastern, trying to bow, while trying to slip from his sight. Her voice, so full of enthusiasm a moment before, had dropped, becoming formal, apologetic, and unoriginal.

"Please, Ms. Higurashi, for the sake of your nerves, do not grovel, do not apologize, and certainly," he reached forward and grabbed her arms and the folders within them before they toppled to the floor once more, "do not drop those folders again."

"I-Oh, sorry," she grabbed the folders out of his hands, turned on her heel, disappeared into a room at their left, and returned a second later, slamming the door in the face of a distressed looking woman.

"Please, what can I do for you?" She asked, her tone now completely formal.

Taisho shifted his weight and raised an eyebrow at her, she was a funny little thing.

"First, you may start by dropping the formality. I was experiencing a decent conversation until my identity was revealed. But, along with that, you could, if it would not trouble you, whisk me away in the general direction of your museum director, this, Dr. Wesley that you speak of. If you were capable of doing those two things, I would be most obliged. That is, again," he paused, his eyes darting over her small frame, "if you do not have anything pressing to attend to."

"Not at all Mr. Taisho, I was on my way to see Dr. Wesley as it were. Please, if you will follow me. Can I take your coat?"

He glanced down at the dark, heavy thing in his hands, and back at the girl, "I don't think you will be able to carry this burden. It looks as if it might overtake you. No, I prefer to hold onto it, lest we have a repeat of our previous hallway entanglement."

He saw the light in her eyes return.

"I don't regularly run around with coats in my hands, just files." With a certain amount of amusement he saw her bite her lip and her eyes widen in horror.

"I'm sorry! I didn't mean-"

"Miss Higurashi, stop apologizing. I find your insolent behavior quite refreshing. If you start again with the formalities, only then will I be offended."

"Oh. Well, then," she tripped over her words, " can I take you to Dr. Wesley, then?' She gestured to the hallway behind him and he moved out of her way, allowing her to lead.

"I wonder, " he mused aloud to her back, as she walked ahead of him, her feet moving quickly, but his own long legs able to match her stride with ease, "what is an obviously well educated young woman like yourself doing running files about the halls of this little establishment?"

Kagome glanced at him in surprise, the heat on her cheeks becoming a constant, "I guess I am working my way up?"

"You don't deny then, that you are overly educated and over qualified for the job of an errand girl?"

"Educated enough, I suppose," she replied quietly.

"You are how old?"

She regarded him sharply, her forehead lined as dark eyebrows drew together, "I-"

"I did not mean to be rude. Pardon my previous question."

She faced foreword again, "I don't mind really, I'm too young yet to take offense. I'm 21."

She could feel his surprise. "Forgive me, I assumed you older. You are very mature in your handling of… situations." She could hear the mirth in his voice, but she dared not turn around.

"I don't know if I would call running into you and then accidentally insulting you to be mature, Mr. Taisho, but I appreciate the compliment."

"On the contrary. I was never insulted and the mere fact that you did not run away from me after our unceremonious meeting is a testament to your ability to handle unfortunate events."

"Ahhh," she said awkwardly, "I- Thank you?"

"I was simply reflecting. You need not be so nervous. I will not tell your museum director about our run in if that is what you are worried about."

The girl's shoulders, which had been visibly tense, lowered a fraction of an inch.

"Thank you. I don't know how well he would take me running into anyone in particular, especially you."

They turned a corner, passing various pieces, displayed beautifully but Taisho's eyes never left the girl in front of him.

"Did you study at University in Japan?"

He saw her dark head shake. Growing tired of the inability to see her face, and read the emotions therein, he took a longer step and came to walk beside her, where he could at least see her profile.

"I did not, Mr. Taisho. I would have liked to, but I only lived in Japan for three years during high school."

"You were schooled in the states then."

"Yes."

"Did you ever travel in your studies?"

"Yes, Sir, To Mexico for several digs."

Taisho did smile then, "And you received a degree in museum studies or anthropology I presume?"

She glanced at him, met his gaze, and quickly looked away, "Yes, Sir, both actually. I minored in cultural anthropology and majored in Museum Studies."

"Well rounded choices for this line of work. A little on the safe side though."

She sighed, becoming wistful, "You have no idea," She gasped at her lack of respect and quickly added, "Sir!"

Ahead of them, a large archway carved into the marble signaled that they were near their destination.

Kagome led him into the Japanese wing, her eyes searching for Dr. Wesley. Instead of finding the cultured Dr., her gaze landed on something entirely different. In the middle of the room, freshly erected, was a marble stand, covered in cloth, upon which the newest piece of unearthed treasures sat.

It was the sword that Aeron had mentioned earlier. And it was beautiful. She felt her breath suddenly leave her body as she gazed at the forged steel, the gleam of which sparkled in her eyes. Approaching it slowly, she leaned down over the glass case, examining every detail.

Behind her, the man watched curiously, his eyes sweeping over the exhibit, calculating, remembering, storing away information for later use, before his attention returned to the girl.

She looked up, feeling his gaze upon her, "I'm sorry, I don't know where Dr. Wesley is. I am sure that he will be here shortly. I could take you to his office if you would like."

"No, I will wait here."

She nodded and then looked back down at the sword. She had never seen anything like it before. The steel was dark, almost black, perfectly polished. She could see her face, strangely reflected back at her, and she wondered if the sword had always looked this way, so dark and tantalizing. She wondered if the owner, or the person who forged it, had spent time gazing at his own reflection in its perfect metal.

"What are you thinking?"

She jumped at the sound of the smooth voice.

Glancing up at the strange man before her she swallowed the knot in her throat. "I was just wondering what the original owner of the sword thought when he…or she," she smiled to herself, "gazed at it. I wondered…"

"What? What did you wonder?"

She dared not look at him, "I wondered if he spent time looking at his own reflection. It seems so perfect that it is hard to believe it is a weapon made for destruction. Anything could look beautiful looking out from there." She motioned to the blade.

"Do you always think so poetically?"

She winced, wondering if the comment was meant to nettle her, and continued to study the ancient weapon, "No, only when faced with true beauty."

"You find this beautiful?"

She circled the marble pillar, her eyes never leaving the smooth curve of the blade, the intricately carved hilt.

"I do. It is art in a way that we rarely see anymore."

"This weapon dispenses death. You consider it art?"

There was no hint of mockery or incredulity in his voice, simply mild interest. She finally looked up to see him gazing at her in his steady, disarming way.

"Dispensing death can be an art, can it not? In its most gruesome form? I remember reading an article or a story somewhere about the way a samurai viewed the death of an opponent. I don't know if it was this one man's thoughts or if many believed this. But he believed in swift, honorable, rehearsed killing. It was like a dance. I remember thinking that it must be horrifying to be part of those deadly steps. Horrifying… but beautiful nonetheless. There is almost something magical about such a piece as this. It is so exquisite but so very deadly."

"If I didn't know any better, Ms. Higurashi, I would say you are a modern day warrior."

He was rewarded with a laugh, "No, Mr. Taisho, I am not. It is a good thing that you know better. I am far from a warrior. I am simply dramatic and appreciative of something so unique. I can't help but notice its beauty. It was made to catch the eye. The person who commissioned this or the person who forged it, perhaps both, must have been truly brilliant." The man stared at her as she ran a hand over the glass that protected the sword. She looked up and smiled, "But what do I know? I am just an overly educated errand girl!" She laughed lightly and the serious mood was dispelled, along with some of her apprehension, was dispelled.

Taisho opened his mouth to say something but a voice behind him interrupted his thoughts before he began.

"Ms. Higurashi?" The voice belonged to Dr. Wesley.

Tashio glanced at the girl and saw her wince and close her eyes, her face falling, the smile disappearing, the bright light in her eyes fading. He frowned as her voice sounded out, echoing dully.

"Yes, Dr. Wesley?"

* * *

Kagome's heart froze in her chest. Where a moment before she had felt just short of giddy, she could now feel her stomach dropping to her knees. Unconsciously she closed her eyes and composed her face, a sense of dread erasing the blithe manner she had allowed herself to adopt, if only for a few minutes. 

"Yes, Dr. Wesley?"

"What in heaven's name is going on? I asked you to deliver the files to Dr. Linus not forge the Nile River! What took you so long? And who is our esteemed guest that you have failed to introduce me to?"

Kagome's eyes darted from the curator to the tall man before her. As Dr. Wesley came into the exhibit she opened her mouth to explain everything before it all came crashing down on her and she was finally fired. But Dr. Wesley spoke first. Upon walking around Mr. Taisho his mouth dropped open in a completely unDr. Weseley like manner. Suddenly, all of his pompous airs had dissipated into the museum around him. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, attempting to straighten his posture and say something intelligent to the man before him. Finally, managing to sputter something along the lines of, "It's an honor" he held out a trembling hand to Taisho, still staring in astonishment.

Kagome watched the exchange between the two men, her brow furrowing as she gazed at Taisho. He was regarding the curator coolly, his brilliant eyes filled with distaste. She could actually feel his changing demeanor in the air around her. It was alight with fricative electricity.

"Dr. Wesley I presume?" His voice suddenly sounded cold and cultured, so unlike the polite interest that had existed in their previous conversation.

"Yes, I – I am. I am so pleased to meet you Mr. Taisho. I was expecting a guest today but I had no idea that _you_ were going to grace us with your-"

"Spare me the gushing, Dr. Wesley. I did not come here to watch you make a fool of yourself."

Dr. Wesley's smile never faded, "My apologies, Sir. And, may I apologize for my assistant who did not call my attention to the fact that we had a guest such as yourself-"

Taisho handed the man his over coat and looked above him, gazing at the ceiling as if to examine the intricate marble, "Do not apologize for your assistant she has been more than helpful and I quite enjoyed her candor and intelligence, which, it seems, was not bestowed on other employees of this small museum."

Dr. Wesley struggled to straighten out the jacket and made to hand it to Kagome, who hurried forward to take it. "I am so sorry that you find our curators and staff less than adequate. Kagome, take this."

Taisho's eyebrow rose at the familiarity, but Dr. Wesley was too embroiled in maintaining his hold of the over coat to notice.

"_Miss _Higurashi," Taisho addressed her as she reached to take the jacket. She looked up at him, visibly worried, "I would prefer if you did not run off into the recesses of the museum to hang my jacket up. I would prefer, if Dr. Wesley could spare you, that you stay, right where you are."

Dr. Wesley stared at the man and slowly retracted his outstretched arms.

"Of, course, Sir," her voice was quiet, barely above a whisper. Glancing at Dr. Wesley she saw his emphatic nodding head and turned back to Taisho, a weak smile forcing its way onto her lips.

She could not deny the fact that his sudden mood swing had disturbed her. It was as if there was two of him. This cold man before her more resembled the person she expected him to be. But, what surprised her most was not the realization that he could be indifferent, it was her disappointment in the apparent loss of the soft-spoken man who had been continuously asking questions. She liked the idea that he was simply shy and reserved, mistaken for aloof, rather than a cold, calculating, detached billionaire who feigned shy.

"Good." His voice rumbled with subdued authority.

Dr. Wesley hesitated, his eyes darting around, thinking quickly.

"Well, then, now that is decided-"

Taisho seemed intent on lording over the conversation and he broke into Dr. Wesley's speech once more.

"I am here in regards to the piece that you have just received. I wish to purchase it."

Dr. Wesley was, for the second time in all Kagome had known him, rendered speechless.

It was her voice that broke the surprised silence.

"You want to buy it!?"

She immediately shut her mouth upon Dr. Wesley's glower. Averting her eyes to the floor, she did not look up as Taisho spoke.

"Yes, I do wish to purchase it." His voice was not as cold and he gazed at her with considerably warmer eyes, but hidden behind her hair, she did not notice.

"Mr. Taisho, our museum has been waiting years for a piece of this type! Our board is expecting to view the new piece this week."

"I can assure you that money is no object. Since this is a private museum I can speculate that you have sold more than a few pieces to individual buyers. Every piece has it's price, Dr., and I am sure what I will offer will be nothing but good news for both you and your museum."

Kagome glanced up and thought she could almost see the dollar signs in the curator's eyes. She watched as he thought it over, tossing it around in his educated mind. He was an intelligent, if impersonal man, and he knew the value of a dollar, the value of this potential offer. Within a matter of seconds he had mulled it over and had made up his mind to at least hear the deal that Mr. Taisho was offering.

Dr. Wesley shifted the heavy over coat into his other arm and regarded the taller man carefully.

"I am aware of your reputation, sir, and I do know that you offer nothing but a fair price for the items you seek. Would you like to go into my office and discuss the piece and the amount you had in mind?"

Kagome watched, silent, intrigued by the happenings before her. Taisho's eyes flit to the girl and then back to Wesley.

"No, I do not make business deals sitting down. That tends to draw them out unnecessarily. I will make you an offer here and now and you can decide whether or not you wish to take it. If it pleases your museum I will return this afternoon after business hours to pick up my piece."

Dr. Wesley looked taken aback and Kagome thought she saw a small smile play on Taisho's lips.

"Very well," The curator wheezed, and Kagome noted that his balding head was perspiring under the stress of the situation. He turned to her, his voice suddenly commanding, "Miss Higurashi, you may leave us to business."

She nodded and made to leave the room, passing by the handsome man, carefully keeping her eyes on the floor. His hand darted out and grabbed her arm, gently, but firmly bringing her to a halt.

"She may stay," he said quietly.

Startled she looked up at him, but he was not looking at her. He was staring down at Wesley, daring him to object. When the curator said nothing, Taisho spoke.

" I will give you ten million. This is at least 500,000 over what it is worth. And I can assume the extra 500,000 will do much in convincing you to release the sword to me in due haste."

Kagome glanced over her shoulder at Wesley, and for a moment, she was afraid that he was going to have a heart attack.

"I feel as if this arrangement is most agreeable," the curator managed to say, digging into his pocket to produce a handkerchief which he swept over his face. Kagome suppressed the urge to laugh.

Never, in all of her days had she ever thought she would see Dr. Wesley interrupted, put in his place, and made nervous to the point of physical ailment. She fought back a grin and glanced at Taisho, the corners of his mouth turned artlessly upwards.

"Good. Draw up the necessary papers," He glanced at his expensive watch, "I will be back at 5:00 pm." He held his hand out and Dr. Wesley gave him back his coat. Shrugging into it he glanced down at the girl.

"I expect you to be here as well, Miss Higurashi. Now, if you would be so kind as to escort me to the door which I arrived through, I would be most grateful."

She nodded and started to turn toward Dr. Wesley to tell him she would be back shortly, when she felt Taisho's hand slide onto her upper arm, much as it had earlier, guiding her through the archway and into the corridor. Normally, she would have been affronted by the act. She liked her personal space and did not appreciate it when people she hardly knew had the audacity to touch her. There was, however, something very gentle and tranquil about his large hand, gently leading her down the hall. It was very gentlemanly, if a bit old fashioned. She wouldn't fault him for it though; she was far too caught up in the fact that a handsome, rich, famous man was paying attention to her. Realizing too late that she was star struck, and acting like a ridiculous girl, she tried to open her mouth to apologize for her idiocy in case she had humiliated herself. But, as if he were reading her mind, Taisho said, "You need not worry that you embarrassed yourself, I often find that I have this effect on people. You, however, are the most composed person I have met in at least a few years. Normally they can't even form sentences."

"Oh," was all she could think to respond which immediately made her cringe. Apparently she now also fell under the category of people who could not form sentences. Suddenly, they were at the entrance. Taisho dropped his hand from her arm and she looked up at him, nearly craning her neck to do so.

"I guess this is your stop," she said, jerking her head to the door, immediately wishing she had kept her mouth shut.

"You would be correct."

He glanced at the door and then back at her, his brow furrowing ever so slightly, "I will be back here this afternoon and you will be here?" Confused as to why he wanted her to be present she started to ask him and he shook his head, interrupting, "You will be here?"

"I- Sure- yeah- Yes, Mr. Taisho." She took a tiny step away from him. He was so tall that when he looked down at her it felt as if he were towering just above her personal space, hovering, making her uncomfortable. He nodded, eyes darting over her face again. He turned to leave and then thought better, standing to face her again.

"Do you enjoy your job, Miss Higurashi?"

Crossing her arms she popped her hip out, trying to relieve the sudden pinch in her right toes, a product of her trendy shoes. Looking down at her heels she sighed.

"I don't know."

"Yes you do," Voice low and serious.

Trying to gauge his intent, she paused, weighing what her answer would cost her. Working her lips over to one side of her face she bit the inside of her cheek and stared at him gloomily.

"No," she heard her voice whisper, "But it's all I've got." Forcing a wry smile onto chapped lips she added brightly, "That and my dog!"

He blinked at her sudden false cheer, "Well," his voice was gentle, as if speaking to a small child, "that's something, then, isn't it?"

"Do you always ask questions?" she wondered, her mouth saying what she was thinking before she could stop herself.

The man's eyes gleamed and she could not help but wonder at the look her cast her. It was something crossed between amusement, surprise, and satisfaction. All of which confused her thoroughly.

"No, rarely, if ever. Which says something about the people who elicit such interest from me." Seeing her confusion he took a step back. Giving her space, and regarded her once more, as if sizing up her very soul, " They would have to be compelling enough for me to break my own rules."

Kagome blushed to the roots of her dark hair. He looked down at her once more and stepped toward the door. Striding out, he turned and spoke before the door swung shut, "And be careful this afternoon, it looks like today has more in store for us." With that he stepped out into the rain. She ran up to the door, watching his dark form as he stepped into a waiting limo.

Her eyes trailed up to the sky, seeing, far to the east, darker clouds looming. She wondered if that was what he meant when he spoke of what was in store. Somehow, deep inside, she didn't think he was talking about the thunderstorms.

* * *

_Don't worry all loose ends will eventually make sense. Hope you enjoyed it.  
_


	4. Of the Clumsy Sort

_Ah, I have found one of my flaws ( there are many, i am sure). I have a tendency to write the wrong character name for Kagome. An effect of writing several stories at once, I am afraid. Let me know if I do this. It's quite embarrassing, really._

_Chapter 4. How utterly fantastic._

* * *

**Chapter 4**

**Of the clumsy sort  
**

Kagome was ignored for the rest of the day. The curators were immersed in paperwork. Even Aeron was needed. As the star accountant he knew the necessary inroads to accepting a 10 million dollar check in exchange for a piece of the museum. He had seen her hovering outside Dr. Wesley's door, waiting to see if she was needed. He smiled at her and then jerked his head imperceptibly, motioning for her to get the heck out of dodge.

And she did just that.

Wandering around the museum for her own amusement was a rare occurrence. Most of the time, she resented the place too much to glean any real enjoyment out of the art and pieces. She hadn't stopped to admire any of the artifacts in far too long.

Glancing at her watch, she sighed. It would be a small wonder if she could get home before 6 or 7. She knew from experience that the exchange of money, signatures, and sword would take far longer than necessary. It was a small miracle that Mr. Taisho was going to receive his sword that very day.

Strolling through the hallways that she normally found herself running through, she instinctively made her way toward the exhibit that was temporarily housing the sword. Inside the archway, she saw a crew of men working, carefully assembling the crate that would house the sword as it was transported. The men often went into the field with Dr. Wesley. As soon as Taisho had left, the curator had immediately placed a call to the crew, explaining the emergency situation. Given the large sums of money involved, they had not hesitated to drop what they were doing, construct a custom crate and deliver it to the museum.

Kagome watched as the men made careful calculations of the size and heft of the sword, careful not to touch or disturb the weapon in anyway. As she watched them, she found her eyes drawn toward the weapon, gleaming benignly. There really was something that drew her attention. As she gazed at it, she thought, for just a moment, it winked at her; it's dark metal shining as if it knew her appreciative thoughts.

Smiling at her ridiculous imagination, she turned and walked away, a moment too late to note the sudden transparency in the blades edges, the strange mist like substance that hung in the air around it.

* * *

The entire museum staff was standing packed just inside the entrance doors when Taisho returned. As he stepped out of his limo, three well-dressed men immediately surrounded him. Kagome wondered at the identities of the dark suited, straight laced, stoic faces before her, until a voice spoke into her ear. As she watched Tashio look up at the dark grey clouds disdainfully, Aeron, a knowing smile on his face, informed her that one of the men was Tashio's lawyer and the other two were his body guards.

One of the bodyguards opened the museum door for Tashio, and he stepped inside, a grimace set on his handsome face. His cool eyes swept over the apprehensive intellectuals before him and Kagome swore she saw a something that resembled a snarl cross his lips. And then his eyes landed on her, tucked away behind all of the more important people. His gaze flickered to Aeron, standing angled toward Kagome, bent slightly, so that she could hear his soft voice when he spoke. Tashio's eyes narrowed ever so slightly. Next to her, she felt Aeron stiffen. Taisho returned his attention to Kagome, his eyes catching hers, letting her know, with little difficulty, that he acknowledged her presence. She felt her face flush under the intense gaze and she darted her eyes away, glancing at anything but him.

The awe that the people around her had been held in suddenly dissipated as Dr. Wesley shook Taisho's hand, speaking quickly, asking him to come to his office to finalize a few pieces of paperwork.

Tashio looked down at the man, his face mostly unreadable, but Kagome, always perceptive, could see the veiled disdain, the general dislike that the man held for the curator. It made her feel a small sense of smug satisfaction.

"Very well, show me to your office," Taisho shrugged off his jacket and held it out, waiting for someone to take it from him. Immediately half a dozen people rushed forward to take the coat

Tashio's eyes narrowed to slits, "Is it absolutely necessary that all of these people be present for a transaction that has little, if anything, to do with them?"

Dr.Wesley turned fearful eyes toward his employees. Without a word they scattered, heading toward their respective offices to wait, to find out what was going to happen. Kagome hesitated and was surprised to find herself the last of the employees standing before the intimidating men.

Dr.Wesley paid her no attention as he began to lead Taisho toward his office. As the men passed her by, she looked down at the floor, disliking their perceptive and disarming gazes. Taisho paused as he walked past, and spoke quietly, so that no one else would hear.

"You may wait for me in the exhibit."

Her head snapped up and she felt a curious mix of anger and elation. Elation because she was being included, acknowledged by this strange man before her, and anger because she did not like the way in which he addressed her. She disliked the way he gave her permission to exist in his presence. While his motives and interest in her were yet to be determined, she could not help but wonder at his interaction with her. Earlier in the day he had been polite but reserved. Even then, she had sensed an air of superiority and confidence. But now, he was practically commanding.

He seemed to note the spark in her eyes and Kagome wondered exactly how well she hid her emotions. The complacent smile on his face indicated that she was not nearly as adept at hiding her state of mind as he was.

And before she could open her mouth to give a smart retort, he walked away, leaving her standing alone in the hallway.

"Well, I never!" She snapped, only after she was sure he couldn't hear her.

Down the hall, the man smiled.

* * *

Kagome was becoming accustomed to stalking down the hallways, the sound of her heels when her footfalls were angry, the way her hands clenched when she wished she had something to throw. She was currently resisting the urge to grab a 16th century vase (one of Wesley's favorite, and all the more reason to smash it to bits), hurl it at the wall, and scream 'HA, take that you chauvinist pigs!'. Breathing deeply, she arrived at the exhibit and leaned against the wall, crossing her arms, blowing her long, dark bangs out of her eyes.

"I am so tired of these pompous men telling me what to do!"

"Perhaps you should stop doing what they say, then."

Kagome jumped and placed a hand on her heart, which was threatening to jump out of her chest. Aeron stood before her, briefcase in hand, jacket rumpled, ready to end his day. He cast her a lopsided grin when he saw her fright.

"Don't do that!" Her voice caught in her anger. "I don't like to be snuck up on!"

He held up his hands, admonished, "Sorry. I didn't mean to sneak. I actually had not thought it was possible to sneak when one is walking on marble floors. Everything echoes."

"Aeron, I know everything echoes." She rubbed her temples in exasperation. Turning toward him she rolled up her shirtsleeves, busying herself with something, trying to keep her anger in check. " Have you never been lost in thought? People find it easy to startle you when you are."

The man leaned casually on the rounded doorway, eyeing her carefully, "Perhaps it has been awhile since I was last lost in thought, then, because I did not realize one could be so sucked into their own head."

He nearly laughed at the green blaze in her eyes, "What are you saying?"

He did laugh now, and smiled slowly, "Nothing. I am merely trying to get a rise out of you. I think that I do it well."

Her anger dimmed, eyes returning to a more stable shade of emerald, "Don't tease me tonight, Aeron, I have had a long day."

"It looked like it." She looked a question at him and he pushed himself up from the wall and walked toward her. Readjusting his glasses he gazed down his long nose at the young woman. "I saw that look that the infamous and dashingly handsome Taisho gave you. Trying to snag yourself a billionaire, are you?"

Rolling her eyes she pushed her disheveled hair out of her face, "I would be the last person to attempt that." To his amusement, she blushed a deep shade of red. "I don't know why he's… er- I don't know if he's even doing anything… do I?" she mumbled. "I don't know much about the billionaire, globetrotting, sword collecting sort."

"And they probably don't know much about the spitfire, curating, clumsy sort. "

The girl giggled, "I am clumsy, aren't I?"

Aeron pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, "Only a little. And perhaps the globetrotting, curating, sword collecting sort find the clumsy sort terribly endearing."

Kagome blushed again and stammered something incoherent. Aeron cocked his head, watching her closely. "Well, in any case, I am starving. Perhaps after you are finished being at Mr. Billionaire's beck and call-"

"I am at no one's beck and call, Aeron Michaels, you had best remember that!" She jabbed her finger into his chest, appearing more like an obstinate child than the young woman she was.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult you, I was actually trying to ask you if you would like to go-"

"Ahem," a voice made both the man and woman look up toward the doorway.

Dr.Wesley, Mr. Taisho, his lawyer, two bodyguards, and the men who would box and carry the sword all stared at Kagome and Aeron.

"…To dinner with me…" Aeron said under his breath, too quietly for Kagome to hear. Taisho glared at him, his eyes blazing more than Kagome's had in the previous moments. Somehow, although he knew it was nearly impossible, he was certain the man had heard him, and Aeron marveled at the look in his eyes.

"Mr. Michaels, Ms. Higurashi, if you would please take this soap opera out of my museum? You are wasting Mr. Taisho's time."

Aeron nodded and moved to leave, Kagome following suit, her head down, embarrassed.

"She may stay."

The voice was soft but full of authority. Kagome dared to look up through the curtain of hair that hid her face from the men currently staring at her.

"Do you not have a sword to give me?" Taisho asked icily, breaking the awkward silence. At his question the men started and jumped into action. He nodded to his bodyguards and they excused themselves to the hallway. Dr. Wesley hovered over the sword, watching as it was handled.

Behind the tall man, Aeron hesitated, glanced at Kagome, who was transfixed with Taisho, and then sighed and headed toward the exit.

Kagome waited until Taisho finally turned his gaze on her. She nearly turned and ran. There was something about him, the way he carried himself that was almost regal. And the authority with which he comported himself bordered on frightening. Earlier in the day she could sense it. But, now that he was standing before them, the ultimate of authority and expectation, his presence nearly took her breath away. He took a step toward her and then faced the sword's display, watching the transport of his newest piece. Kagome surveyed him as he stood, hands clasped behind his back, feet spread to balance his weight evenly. She was unexpectedly struck by a thought; his posture was almost like that of a warrior. Her mind's eye flashed and she saw a glimpse of him, as regal as she could imagine, dressed for battle, the sword at his hip. She blinked rapidly, the sudden vision leaving her light headed. If Taisho noticed, he did not let on; his gaze merely flickered to her and back to the commotion in front of them.

"Do you know anything about the sword before you?"

Kagome rubbed her forehead, struggling to bring the present into focus. "No," she said distractedly, pushing away the images that struggled to claim her conscious. "I'm sorry," she murmured, as her thoughts cleared. She looked up at his profile, "I do not. I would like to learn about it. I must admit I have been remiss in my research as of late."

"You would find this particular sword's history to be interesting."

Kagome rubbed her hand across her forehead again, the strange fuzzy feeling returning, overtaking her thoughts. "Would I?"

"Yes. You were commenting on the aesthetic beauty of the sword and the mindset of those that forged it." She nodded distantly. "It was commissioned in Japan, about 500 years ago, give or take a decade or two. Little is known about the one who commissioned it, except that, it is the belief of some, that a great and powerful warlord of the west requested it from a little known sword master of the east. It is unique for both its design and its durability. If what the scholars say is true, it has held up remarkably well given its years."

"I'll say," she heard her voice whisper.

A sudden headache at her right temple; her hand moved to touch the aching area. Her brow furrowed as the image in her mind rushed forward. The exhibit in front of her, the man next to her, and the sword before her disappeared into a different scene. She was looking at a forge, anvils, mallets, and the heat of fire shimmering in the air. It was dark inside the room she was seeing. Her vision looked upward. Rotting beams of dark wood shrunken from water intake and loss allowed narrow shafts of golden sunlight to filter down into the dark. Dust danced across the light, mingling with the red glow from the fires and the forges. She could feel the heat rising as she took a step and sweat broke out over her forehead. Her attention was drawn to a darker corner, where sudden bursts of red blaze and sparks shot forth. It was difficult to make out anything in detail, but she could see a man's back, bare to the air and heat. He was sweating from the heat of the fires and the exertion needed to slam the anvil down on the red hot metal before him. He turned, his heavily gloved hand wrapped around the sword, still glowing, not completely formed. The man looked up at her, or rather, past her, and nodded his acknowledgment . She turned, feeling a strong presence at her back.

Her vision began to blur. As the scene began to melt away, she was able to see an open door, spilling forth-white sunlight, the dark shadow of a man framed in the doorway.

Kagome gasped as she was suddenly thrust back into the museum. To her right, she saw Mr. Taisho looking at her sharply, attempting to gauge the cause of her behavior.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded, swaying a little on her feet. "Oh, I'm fine. Is it me or is it a little hot in here?"

"I find it adequate to my tastes."

Kagome pulled her hair off of her neck, watching distractedly as the men carefully removed the glass case around the sword. She fanned her face absently, more concerned than she hoped she was letting on.

"You do not look well."

She jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Looking up at the man she forced a smile, "I'm fine. Just a headache."

She sincerely hoped it was just a headache.

Tashio took his hand from her shoulder and pushed back the sleeve of his suit to reveal his watch.

"Perhaps you are suffering from hunger. It is around dinner time."

The men handling the sword were speaking quietly to one another, carefully picking the blade up with gloved hands, depositing it into the box.

"Perhaps."

They were quiet for a moment. As Taisho watched the men pack his sword away, he finally turned his eyes back to Kagome.

"Are you truly as interested in this weapon as you appear?" His voice held something that caught her attention. She turned her still unfocused eyes and mind toward him.

There was an intensity that he gazed at her with, as if her answer were to make all the difference. But all the difference to what? To whom? Apparently, she thought, as he continued to state are her, it made all the difference to him.

"To say that I have always been interested in this sword would be a lie. But since I first saw it this afternoon, I can say that it has piqued my curiosity. Even more so now that you have divulged what you know. I wanted to research it after seeing it, but I did not have the means to do so this afternoon."

The man nodded, he was thinking. She could tell by the way his eyes drifted.

"I know much about this sword, much more than I told you a moment before. I probably know more than a book or a historian could ever tell you."

She rubbed the back of her neck; it was still hot in the room. "I don't doubt that for an instant, Sir. From what I know of you, which is very little, you take your history and your artifacts seriously."

"But you would be correct in your assumption." He paused, stepping a little closer to her. Turning slightly, so that his back was mostly to the men, he spoke at length. "Ms. Higurashi, I will not lie to you. I find you very interesting. To say that you are somewhat of an enigma to this man before you would be a gross understatement. I find your interest in this sword to be parallel with mine. It is not often that I find someone who appreciates something that I do, as fully as I do. Even the men and women who found this piece, all of whom I spoke with, did not characterize its essence the way that you did, this afternoon. I found your thoughts on the piece to be enlightening. And rarely, if ever, do I find someone who enlightens me on something that I already know so much about. If I may make a suggestion?"

She nodded, at a loss for words. He turned more, moving his body closer, his back completely to the men who were finishing their task. He leaned toward her slightly, dropping his voice to give his words privacy. Golden brown eyes bore into hers.

"If I may say, that you look rather tired and I can presume famished." As if on key her stomach rumbled and she looked uncomfortable. " If I may say," he repeated, his voice dropping to a hushed whisper, "since you are so interesting and so interested," his mouth parted to reveal a confident smile, "that you should accompany me to dinner this evening, where, I am sure, if you desired, you could learn much about the weapon before you… among other things," he added lazily.

Kagome's mouth opened but she could find nothing to say. She was in complete and utter shock.

"Should I take that for a yes?" His smug, overly confident voice snapped her out of her wordlessness.

"I am very flattered and appreciative of your offer, Mr. Taisho-"

"Wonderful, you may ride with me in my-"

She shifted slightly, removing herself from his immediate presence, to a more suitable distance, allowing room to breathe, "However, I must decline."

The man faltered and stared down at her his face betraying little emotion besides his complete and utter shock. She could see that he wasn't often turned down. In fact, she could reasonably presume, given the look on his face, which he was quickly composing, that he was never turned down.

"You must decline?" She almost laughed as he hissed at her. "And what, pray tell, is more interesting and compelling than the sword with which you desire to learn about?"

"My dog."

If he had been a different man, one not so accustomed to controlling his emotions, she would have expected him to open his mouth wide, and then in an attempt to collect his thoughts, place his hand over his mouth, narrow his eyes at her, turn, walk a few feet away, a hand on his hip, and walk back toward her, still, with nothing to say. As it was, he prevented himself from doing all but one of those.

His eyes narrowed, disbelieving "Your dog?"

"Yes. He needs to be fed and let out. He would not understand if I left him alone all evening without food or a chance to relieve himself."

Taisho glowered at her for a moment and then, to her surprise and amusement, he stalked forward, disappearing behind her back, out of her line of sight. A moment later he reappeared and walked around to stand in front of her, his emotions back in control.

"Very well. You drive a car do you not? To and from work?"

Her answer was hesitant, "Yes."

"Good. You will drive to your home, see to your animal, and then my driver will pick you up. Does that suit you? You gave no other reason why you would not be able to accept my offer other than that. I can only assume that once your creature is taken care of you will be able to willingly accept my invitation."

She gaped at him. The confidence in his eyes returned.

"Well, I-I- I don't know, I have work tomorrow and I'm feeling a little dizzy-"

"Ms. Higurashi," he straightened his jacket, his attitude suddenly careless, "If you will inform me of your address then I will instruct my driver as to where he should pick you up. If you leave now, you will have plenty of time to feed and relieve your dog."

"But I-"

He looked down at her again, his smile hidden behind a stern face, "Your address?" Before she could stop herself she told him. "Good. You will be picked up at 7:00."

"Well, I didn't actually acce-"

He turned his attention to the men who were now picking up the crate and placing it on a cart. "What you are wearing is perfectly acceptable attire for our destination. I will see you at the restaurant I am sure."

And with that, he stepped forward and engaged Dr. Wesley in conversation. Kagome, in a daze, turned and walked into the hallway, passed the bodyguards and walked into her office. She paused, feeling odd. Her desire to learn about the sword was currently overwhelming her desire to run back into the exhibit and kick Taisho in the shins for his nerve. And her head was still swimming. She felt as if she had just spun around in her office chair, and was only now beginning to see straight. The confusion, wonder, and questions that slipped through her mind were dispelled as an image of the sword thrust itself into the forefront of her musings. Perhaps she should wait to dissect the strange images she had seen until all other things were less addled in her brain.

Sighing, she collected her purse, briefcase, jacket, and umbrella, she hurried out of the museum and to her car, hoping she had enough time to take care of Ajax. She also hoped her mind would clear and give her a better opportunity to give Tashio a piece of her mind.

* * *

_Worry not, friends, all loose ends will be tied up eventually. Thanks for reading. _


	5. Of the Billionaire Sort

_Thank you very much for all the reviews. As much as it pains me to say this, I can't answer your questions... fear not! They will be answered in the next few chapters... mostly. I have big plans for this story, so hang round and you'll find out. Now, enjoy._

* * *

**Chapter 5**

**Of the billionaire sort**

As Kagome ran around her apartment looking for her black skirt, cursing her stupidity out loud. Ajax watched his owner as she ran from the kitchen to the bedroom and back again. Her hair was still soaked, plastered to her face and back.

"Ajax! What am I going to do!?"

She had found her skirt. Draped over door handle on the backside of the kitchen door, leaving a watery puddle beneath it. In her haste to get ready she had completely forgotten that a car in the parking lot, as it drove by, had splashed her… all of her. Now the clothes that she had planned on wearing were a sopping mess in her kitchen.

Curses spilled from her mouth as she ran to her closet, tripping over the shoe had strewn about the floor. Flicking through the clothing her hands met with a black dress that she hoped would still be appropriate. Slipping it on she screamed in fury as the water from her hair soaked the back and shoulders of the dress.

"Mother f-"

The sound of a hairdryer blasted from the bathroom and the corgi, lounging by the couch, sighed and laid his head down. He looked forlornly at his tennis ball and then closed his eyes, immediately falling asleep.

Kagome emerged from the bathroom, hair semi dry and mascara in hand as a knock sounded at her door. Running to the apartment door she flung it open and stared at the man in front of her.

He looked like a secret agent. Dark sunglasses adorned his face and his suit was nearly as nice as Mr. Taisho's.

"Ms. Higurashi?"

Recovering her voice she glanced down at her stage of dress, "Uh, are you the driver?"

He was. Kagome, in a feat that would make any woman proud, was ready within 7 minutes, out the door, and into the limo, driving toward the mysterious man who had occupied her thoughts all day long.

* * *

Taisho followed the hostess to the table, glancing at the interior of restaurant, making a quick assessment. Pleased with his choice of dinning, he sat down at the table and waited. Glancing at his watch, he allowed himself the barest of smiles, and drummed his fingers on the table. She would be with him shortly.

He hoped.

She was unpredictable, that was the problem. He knew this about her and he had only just met her. Sighing, he forced the smile on his lips to subside, remembering the way she had wheeled around the corner, running smack into his capable hands. He had silently marveled at her as she spoke to him. Her emotions fluctuated by the second, they played across her face and he could read them like the pages of a book. Always an excellent judge of character, Taisho could see she was determined, intelligent, audacious, and most obviously, a klutz. However, he could say, with reasonable certainty, that she was one of the few people within distant memory that he had immediately respected. There was something about the way her large green eyes flashed at him, the way she blushed when he paid attention to her, the way that even when someone of authority told her what to do she did not loose her myriad and interesting mentality; the spark in her eyes always returned.

He also liked that she was not afraid of him. Yes, she found him a mystery. An attractive mystery, he could see that, too. But she was not so taken with him that she let him get away with his normal behavior. He knew that if he pushed her far enough, she would retaliate. After all, she had put him in his place when he asked her to dinner. That had been enough to earn his begrudging esteem. It was a good thing she measured up to everything he thought she would be.

After all, their sudden meeting had been no mistake.

Holding his glass out for the water to fill with wine, he thought how best to make his next move. It would be imperative to have her follow his plan whilst still thinking she had control. He did not want to scare her off. That would be detrimental to his strategy.

However, he had to admit, sipping the vintage, enjoying the warmth as it slid down his throat, thus far, everything had happened as he wished. He had possessed the sword in less than a week. A day in fact. That he had dropped 10 million dollars had certainly helped speed up the process. But, even he had been surprised by his quick acquisition of the sword.

Now, he thought, as his gaze was drawn toward the front of the restaurant, all he had to do was convince the girl. His grip on the glass tightened slightly as he saw her appear. Even from the distance at which he sat, he could tell that she was flustered and nervous. But she looked lovely.

It was a quick lapse in his thoughts, noticing her looks. As a man who prided himself on accounting for every detail, beauty and personal appeal did not escape him. But most people possessed the kind of charm and good looks that had little to no effect on him. He let his assessment wander a little from his normal impersonal dissection. After all, it was imperative if he expected to understand how she worked.

She was dressed differently from when he had seen her at the museum. She wore a black dress that fell to her knees. The dress was tailored, fit to compliment her. A high collar flared slightly, revealing her neck and collarbone. The sleeves of the dress came down to her elbows, leaving her forearms bare, revealing a small silver bracelet clasped around her right wrist. He noted that she still wore her heels from work and her step was suffering from her choice in footwear.

He watched as she approached the hostess, her purse in one hand, and her black jacket in another. She looked younger than 21. Her dark hair fell in waves down her back, bangs tumbling into glittering jade eyes. Her lips were pursed, revealing her tension and anxiety.

As the hostess led the girl toward him, her eyes darted around the restaurant; she was impressed by the location. Taisho felt a sense of confident satisfaction well within. Her gaze swept by him and then quickly returned. She did not smile; he sensed she was too nervous to do so. But even with a perfectly straight face she drew the attention of at least half the men in the room.

Taisho stood as she came to the table. She looked up at him in surprise. Apparently his gesture was unexpected.

"Good evening," he said as good-naturedly as he could manage.

"Hello, Mr. Taisho."

The hostess offered to take her purse and coat from the girl and Kagome surrendered the items. As she did, Taisho moved to pull out her chair for her.

"Oh, thank you, Sir." She sat, her face bright red again.

He moved back to his chair and sat, crossing his legs and reaching for his wine glass.

"Would you like some wine?"

She nodded forcefully and he gestured for the waiter to fill her glass. She took the goblet with shaking hands and lifted it to her lips, savoring its taste.

"Thank you."

He nodded and the waiter left them alone. Finally, after several awkward moments, her eyes met his without darting away.

"Ms. Higurashi, are you alright? Your nerves seem to be a bit… shaky."

Kagome exhaled, took another sip of wine, and then smiled, her consternation fading considerably. "I know, I'm sorry-"

"Don't apologize."

She brushed her hair off her shoulders absently, still uncomfortable under his gaze, "I was... am… was… a bit flustered. I was headed to my apartment and as I walked inside, a car went by and splashed me with puddle water. Large amounts of puddle water. So, needless to say, I was a bit rushed in getting ready."

"Well, you are here now, looking un-drenched and attractive."

Her fingers trembled and she took another drink from her wine, "Thank you," she squeaked.

Taisho watched her in amusement. She fidgeted for several moments until he spoke again, realizing she was far too nervous to start any conversation on her own.

"I take it that your dog was alive and well when you returned to your home?"

She looked up to see the veiled, if slightly sarcastic, humor dance in his eyes."He was fine. I just can't help it; he's all I have. I can't let him down."

Taisho glanced up to his left, as the waiter returned with a menu. He took it and opened it, his golden brown eyes flickering across the dishes listed with a practiced air.

"And I am sure he is most appreciative."

"Let's hope so. The amount of time and money I spend on that dog you'd think he was…"

She trailed off and Taisho looked up to see her staring at the menu, her face white.

"Is something wrong?"

She hugged the menu to her chest and looked up at him, incredulous.

"Oh, nothing, it's just uh… well, I can honestly say I have never seen salad that cost so much money."

Taisho smirked and closed his own menu. "Do not order the salad. Do you eat meat?" She nodded. "I will order for us then. Put that down. We have more interesting things to discuss than the prices of the food."

Slowly, she placed the menu on the table and regarded him seriously.

"You mentioned earlier that you were 21?" Her eyebrow quirked slightly and he continued on before the dangerous glint in her eye appeared. "I ask simply because that is quite an impressive age to be and have one's bachelor's degree."

"Oh," she rolled her eyes and waved her hand dismissively, "That's nothing impressive, really, most people graduate by 22. Some of the classes I took while in Japan were more advanced than those I would have taken had I gone to a high school here in the states. When I returned for my senior year, I tested into higher classes and took courses at the local college for half my day. I also took summer school and night classes once I was actually in college. I was restless to move on and acquire my masters degree even before I finished my freshman year."

"You are working for it right now, then?"

She shook her head, earrings glittering in the dim light, "I was going to, but, things happened," her voice trailed off and her face saddened. Taisho made note of it, but decided not to ask her about "things" at the present moment. Hopefully, there would be time later. Correction. There _would_ be time later. " Eventually, I plan on working toward it while maintaining my position at the museum."

Taisho leaned forward slightly, swirling the wine in his glass. His smile was ironic, "Surely you don't want to maintain your position. I seem to remember your general distaste for the job."

She laughed and nodded, the tension in her frame easing ever so slightly. "Well, keeping my current position is better than having none whatsoever."

"Why do you stay at a job that makes you unhappy?"

She bit her lower lip, thinking, "I've worked there for three years. From the outside, it looks like I have a good job. I want to put in my time now, so that someday, I hope, it will pay off. It might not be what I want to do right now, but it _is_ a prestigious museum. My work might not be, but the name is. Maybe, one of those old fogies will die and everyone will get promoted." Taisho coughed, covering his laugh, and she glanced at him quickly, to see if he disapproved. Apparently the mirth she saw was enough to allow her to further relax. She gave him her first real smile of the evening and continued to speak, "I would quit except I have this silly hope that one day, one day soon, Dr. Wesley will suddenly see how much I can contribute, that I do have a semblance of intelligence, and that I can make a difference around the museum."

"You may be suffering under a false hope."

She sighed and placed her cheek in her hand, "Don't I know it. But I don't really have anything else to do. The pay is decent and I can't give up my apartment. I can't move because then I might not be able to find a place that is as good of a deal as I have now. Plus, you have no idea how hard it is to find a place that is in a good neighborhood and allows you to keep pets. It's ridiculous."

" Those sound like excuses to avoid what you really want to do, Miss Higurashi. What about your family? Surely they would help you if it was not worth the effort of staying."

She blinked rapidly and Taisho could see the pulse beating in her neck; her heart was racing. He wondered if she was fighting back tears as she fluttered her eyes, her face blank.

"I don't have anyone to help me," she finally said, voice soft.

He felt a twinge of regret. He had not meant to bring up painful memories.

"My apologies, I did not mean to pry."

She studied the tablecloth, her hand running across the intricate patterns, "There is nothing to pry up. There just isn't anyone to help me and that's that."

"No one but your dog, that is," he attempted to bring the smile back to her face.

She plucked at a loose thread on the tablecloth, "Yes."

Taisho cursed himself. Opening his mouth to say something, anything to bring her back, he said the first thing that came to his mind, "You are far too intelligent to work for that fool, Wesley."

She did smile then, "You have no idea how glad I am to hear someone call him that."

"He is far too self absorbed to impress me with his intelligence. For, he is intelligent."

The girl nodded, leaning forward, resting her elbows on the table, her eyes sparkling again, "He is. He is terribly smart, but he is such an _ass_. But, Mr. Taisho, I have never in my three years at Worthington seen anyone talk to him the way you did. It was brilliant, if you ask me."

Taisho smiled at her over his wine glass and an eyebrow rose, "I am sure he had it coming."

They spoke quietly about the museum, Taisho artfully directing the conversation, making sure they avoided subjects that might make her upset, subjects that might push her away. When the waiter returned some minutes later, she was well on her way toward jovial. Taisho ordered the filet minion for both he and the girl, and watched as her eyes widened slightly. He knew she was resisting the urge to grab the menu, check the price, and then insist on drinking water.

But before she could protest, he waved the waiter away and spoke again.

" I wondered if you wanted a chance to have a closer look at the sword."

She choked on her wine. Wincing, she coughed until she could inhale oxygen again. "A closer look?"

He nodded and brushed away a piece of white-blonde hair that fell into his eyes. "Yes. You admire the sword, the way it was made, and all of those other charmingly poetic words you spoke that I do not recall." That was a lie. He remembered very well what she had said.

"I do admire it."

"Then you should have a closer look at it."

He waited, trying to dissect the emotions that danced across her features. "Alright."

"When would you like to see it?"

She faltered, brows furrowing at his question, "When?" She thought for a moment, "Perhaps you should tell me when it is alright for me to see the sword. I have a suspicion that you are more busy than I."

"I can make time."

He leaned back and laced his fingers together, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair, studying her intensely.

"It doesn't matter to me, Mr. Taisho," her answer gave him the opportunity to decide, as he had wanted.

"Very well, will tonight be convenient for you?"

She shifted in her chair, avoiding his eyes, "I suppose, if that is what you would like."

"Is that not what _you_ would like?" He smiled behind his folded hands, enjoying her discomfort. He found her hesitancy to rise to his teasing interesting, especially given her anger earlier that day.

"If it suits you," she mumbled.

"It does. After we have eaten we may go to see the sword. Would you like to know more about it?"

Her head popped up, awkwardness forgotten, "I would love to know more."

It pleased him to know she was truly interested in its history. Taking a final sip of his wine he began his story.

"As I said earlier, it was forged around 500 years ago in eastern Japan, commissioned by the warlord of the west. Mind you, there was not a single warlord of the west, but he was the greatest, so legend says. He owned extensive parts of the western lands and lorded over them with a diligent hand. He did not answer to any emperor, shogun, or any other man, he was the epitome of power, at least on his lands. But even when he stepped foot on other feudal lord's property, they did not dare cross him. His enemies were great and many, but in that day, it was common to have so many that saw the advantage in one's demise. He gained acquisition of surrounding lands by conquering. It is said he was truly ruthless. His father, who was to be impressive in his own right, bestowed the western lands upon him. The son was said to be more ruthless than the father, but not without mercy. But, we can never know for sure."

His eyes glowed with a strange light as he spun his tale. "When the sword was commissioned there was a war brewing, although you will not find any accounts of it in the better known history books and Internet sites." He smiled grimly at the last comment. "In any case, there was war on the horizon, and the sword was commissioned for the lord of the west, in preparation for that battle." He halted his story for a moment, as their dinners were placed in front of them. Looking up he saw Kagome's face, rapt with attention, focused on him.

Feeling pleased, he continued, "Legend says that the forging of the sword lasted for over a year and a half-"

"A year and a half! I don't know much about swords, but isn't that a bit lengthy?"

He shook his head, lifting his glass for the waiter to fill, "Not if you believe the legend." The girl stopped as she was lifting her fork to her mouth, enthralled again. "The legends say that while a sword of that caliber would take some time to forge… it was an original design, or the last of its kind, perhaps both… it states that the forging was lengthy because the blade was also being imbued with powerful spells.

The forger, although a master, was little known to the world. He made few swords for commission and rarely made swords that were not of his own design. The swords he did make were not meant to harm another living creature. As a young man, the forger had been a great warrior, but after dispensing death and dealing destruction for the first few decades of his life, he faked his own death, an ugly brutal demise, that is a story in itself, and he disappeared from the warrior's world. Very few knew of his existence, and his former life was kept a secret until he was a very old man. He took the skills that he learned as a warrior and applied them to the creation of masterpieces. Of the swords he created, most were given to men who no longer fought in battle, shoguns, kings, rich men, and retired warriors. But, there were some who he sold his swords to, some that he designed and made with the knowledge that they would kill. He was a man who was blessed with immense power.

None of his other weapons were given the power of sword I now posses. He laced the blade with his own power and magic, the magic of a warrior. The warlord of the west had also sent a powerful mage to assist in the making. He wanted the sword to be the ultimate perfection of weaponry. It was also to be a neutral piece of necromancy. The sword was to choose its master. The warlord did not wish to have such a powerful weapon fall into the wrong hands, even if those hands were his own. He, too, contributed his sorcery and power to the sword. But in the end, and the last mallet had fallen, after all the spells had been cast, the sword was not his. The blade had to declare him the master. If it did not, he would never be able to wield it.

There was something that the three men had not accounted for. While they were giving their powers over to this epic weapon, they had never once thought that the sword would take on a life of its own. When they finished the task, the warlord approached the blade he had designed, he had poured his very soul into, and it rejected him. It rejected all that touched it. Some it spurned with vehemence, some with a gentle rebuke. The warlord was given a vision by the magic of the sword. He was to find a person who could hold the blade, who could communicate with it. The sword, although it had not out and out chosen him to be the master, wanted the warlord to aide its quest. The warlord left the forging sight, where the sword still rested, and sought out the one the sword called for.

It took him many months to find her-"

"Her?" Kagome's voice, barely above a whisper, was full of wonder and infectious fascination.

"Yes," he murmured, his attention suddenly somewhere else, remembering something from long ago. His words were now as quiet as the girl sitting opposite him.

"Her."

Kagome waited, her dinner growing cold, watching Taisho as his eyes came back into focus. His face hardened, the momentary sadness dispelling quickly.

"It was a woman. A young woman. She was younger than you, perhaps in her mid teens. He found her in a poor village, many hundreds of miles from his own lands. She was like any other young girl from a diminutive community. She helped her family survive, followed the rules of the hamlet, and would one day be married off to a young man to start the cycle all over again. When he found her, the village was holding out despite its limited resources.

To the warlord's eyes she was a truly unremarkable girl. He had expected a great and powerful miko, or a priestess, at the very least. She was nothing phenomenal, but she was the one the sword desired. The warlord, impatient to bring the girl back to the weapon, offered her parents and the village elders large sums of money to allow her release. Money as a bribe… so she would be willingly given to him. Eventually they agreed. To the village folk, even if she would not be in the best hands, the ends justified the means. Her family and her village gave her up to the warlord despite the protestations of the girl."

Taisho stopped his story as the waiter cleared their plates. Looking at Kagome he saw her cover her mouth, empathy drawn in her eyes and painted on her face.

"Does that upset you?" He asked, wondering at the moisture that collected in her emerald eyes.

"I can't imagine being given up by the people who were supposed to love and protect you. It just makes me think how lucky I am that my family never…" she stopped, and placed her hands in her lap, "Never mind. Please, continue."

He cocked his head slightly. He wanted to know what she was going to say. He thought better and sighed, proceeding with his tale.

"Her family and village abandoned her to the warlord for the money he offered. Needless to say, the girl felt betrayed and deserted in the grips of the warlord. Though he never mistreated her, he did little to help her see he meant her no harm. He was not a replacement of the village people she had thought had loved her. They traveled back to the sight of the forging, slower than the warlord would have liked. After their travels he saw the girl as a hindrance and a nuisance. She hated him because he had taken her away from all that she knew and did little to dispel her worries about her future. He did not tell her that he would return her to the village after he was finished with her. It never crossed his mind to inform her of her fate.

When they reached the forger and the mage, the warlord was informed that word of the sword had spread and powerful enemies were amassing to claim the weapon. Time was running out for the men and the girl. If they could not find a way to have the sword claim its master, both the sword and the girl were in jeopardy. The girl was brought before the sword and the warlord told her to pick it up. She did so with little difficulty aside from the fact that it was too heavy for her to fully lift off the ground. When she tried to hand it to any of the other three men they were burned with its power.

She told the mage, the forger, and the warlord that the sword spoke to her when she touched it. When she told them of what it said, or rather, what it showed her in her mind, it was clear that the warlord was meant to wield the sword, but no matter how many ways they tried, the four companions, only the girl was able to touch the weapon.

The visions in her mind became more insistent, as if the sword was becoming impatient. The four companions began to travel, as their enemies and the war began to encroach. It was now imperative that they protect the girl, who had somehow become the protector of the sword. They ran. They could not afford to stop and fight. It was vital that they find a way to have the sword accept the warlord as its master, before it chose someone else, someone who's motives were not in line with their own.

By this time, the girl had been away from her village for a year. As they fled, the group came within close distance of her village. The girl begged to see her family and the warlord agreed. As they adjusted their course, they were spotted by one of their most powerful enemies."

Taisho handed his credit card to the waiter, not breaking his gaze from Kagome, who was wringing her hands in anticipation.

"What was his name?" He blinked. "The warlord, what was his name?"

Taisho folded his hands again, and leaned on the table just as she did. He broke his gaze with her and looked at the tabletop, where his glass of wine had left a faint red ring. His long finger reached out to trace the rouge colored halo, his mouth suddenly dry. When he looked back up at the girl, his face was fixed in its mask.

"He has had many names, but none are accurate. The best appellation for him is simply 'warlord'."

The girl's apprehension melted away to reveal confusion. His tone had been curt, the first time he had ever directed such an emotion at her.

"Do not trouble yourself with his name. Given his end, he would not want it to be known," he said this softly, trying to apologize for his previous retort. She did not speak and he took this as his cue to continue his story.

"As they approached the village, the warlord knew that something had happened. He tried to convince the girl that they should divert to their original plan, but she knew by then that he had sensed something was wrong. She broke from the group and ran for her village, finding the path easily. Little had changed in her yearlong hiatus from her home. Her three protectors ran after her, aware now that the danger was high, that they were running right into what they had struggled to avoid.

When they caught up with the girl, she stood in the middle of what was left of her home. Everyone had been slaughtered. Huts were burned to the ground. Women and children had been slain as they ran. The animals were even killed." Kagome looked away at this, her face pale.

"As the girl's companions ran to her, they saw too late, the attack of their greatest enemy. The girl was caught in the fray, and the warlord, realizing his own mistake, also too late, watched as the girl he had taken, dragged across a country, and fallen in love with, was pierced with the blade of his enemy.

His two companions held the enemy at bay while the warlord collected the girl into his arms, attempting to say everything that he had been unable to speak before. She lay, bleeding out in his grasp, smiling at him. With the last ounce of her strength, she drew the sword that she always carried with her and told him to take it, to make things right, no matter how long it took. She told him that she did not love him, but perhaps, someday, if he made amends, if he learned, someone else would love him the way she wished she could.

As he watched her die, he said one last thing before she closed her eyes forever.

'Give me the sword.'"

Taisho smiled sadly, shaking his head, "He did not try and apologize again or convince her that he truly loved her. He knew that he could not. The only way that she would ever forgive him was if he took the sword from her hands, the sword that he had sacrificed her for, and use it. His hands closed around hers right before she drew her final breath.

His companions were too immersed in their respective battles to listen or see the exchange between the girl and the warlord, but they felt the sudden shift in power. They saw the blast of light that burned away all matter within a hundred feet. They cowered as sorcery of a kind they had never seen, unleashed itself on their enemy.

It was enough to drive him back. The warlord did not know how to use the sword. He had not mastered it yet. Ruled by his emotions, he had used what he knew: raw power. It saved his companions lives, but it did not save the girl he loved. After her death he spent many years tracking his enemy. An enemy that had grown stronger over time. He was a powerful man, too."

Taisho felt the spasm in his cheek, the bite of his nails into his palm. "No," his voice was laced with controlled fury, "I correct myself. He was not a man. He was a demon from hell. He was a creation of all things malicious and depraved." Cooling the blaze in his eyes and the thundering in his heart, he forced a smile that appeared closer to a sneer.

"Legends and many religions say that there are demons and gods and spirits but they can either be good or evil. Some say they are moral agnostics. It is my own belief that they choose good or evil or they play both sides, just as humans do. Perhaps these words: demon, spirit, god, have too many connotations and denotations attached with them to accurately portray what these beings were… or are. The enemy that the warlord tracked was an evil demon. His desire was to destroy and rule. He gathered power and followers quickly. Not many wished to stand in his wake when he unleashed his final blow.

The warlord separated from the forger and the mage. He did not wish to involve anyone else in his hunt. It was his burden to bear."

The waiter returned and handed the man his credit card. Taisho stood from his chair, slipping his credit card into his wallet and then his wallet into his jacket pocket. Walking over to Kagome's chair he pulled it out for her and she stood, an expectant look on her face.

"Did he ever-"

"Yes," He offered her an arm and she took it, without hesitation, "But, delay a moment. I will continue the story in the limo."

The man walked the girl through the restaurant, staring down anyone who happened to look toward them. At the door, they were given their coats and in Kagome's case, her purse. Taisho helped her into her black raincoat before donning his own. He placed his hand on her upper arm, guiding her through the door that the hostess held open.

Outside, the rain had finally stopped. It was dark now, and the lights from the cars and buildings reflected oddly on the stagnant water in the streets. Taisho could feel a melancholy emanating from the girl next to him; it was so great that he wondered how she could affect him so, his own heart feeling heavier than before.

"Does the story have a happy ending?" he caught her voice on the wind, soft and pensive.

Glancing down at her profile he wished her could answer yes, but he did not want to lie, not about this.

"I do not know."

The limo pulled up to the curb and the chauffer stepped out and opened the door for the couple. Taisho helped Kagome in and she slid over on the seat, allowing him room to sit. When the door shut and the car began to move, she turned to him. He pressed a button on the side of the door and the electric windows rolled down, letting in the smell of the rain, the cool night air both refreshing and strangely heart wrenching.

With the wind blowing on his hair and the scent of fresh rain filling his nose, dispelling some of his own sadness, he turned his eyes back to the girl. In the dim light of the limo he could only catch glimpses of her when they passed under street lamps.

"Would you like to hear the rest?"

He could only see part of her face, hidden in shadow, but he already knew the answer to his question.

"Yes."

Taking a deep cleansing breath he stilled his mind and began the final part of the sword's history, knowing all the while it was a lie.

The story had no end.

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_ Thanks for reading !_


	6. Weaving the Tale

I've decided to keep three chapter ahead of myself. I just finished writing chapter 9 so that means I can upload this chapter. Again, I can't answer your questions! I want the story to do it for me. I appreciate all the reviews and for those who don't review I appreciate that you read.

(Also, in coming chapters I can finally promise some action.)

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**Chapter 6**

**Weaving the Tale**

Kagome slid into the limo, her legs trembling. She hated when they did that. When faced with a situation that made her nervous she often lost control of her ability to walk or even hold herself up right. The loss of leg function was usually coupled with an inability to think or speak and a stomachache of titanic proportions. She was just glad that Taisho did not notice. Or, she hoped he hadn't noticed.

The man slid into the seat next to her, his face unreadable. Crossing her legs, she busied herself with arranging the skirt of her dress, marveling at the extent of her apprehension. While she had no real way of knowing his intentions she knew he would not hurt her or put her in a compromising situation. Although her better judgment told her she should not be in the limo with him, let alone any man she had only just met, she could not explain how she knew that nothing of a heinous nature would befall her. Despite this she still struggled with the voice in her head, the one that warned her whenever she found herself in over her head. Her gut told her she was safe but her head still wanted to argue.

His story had captivated her. She had been so wrapped up in his tale that she had hardly taken a bite of her dinner, although, he had not seemed to mind in the slightest. Rather, he seemed pleased at her rapt attention.

Kagome had found it hard not to become emotionally involved in his tale. She was the first person to admit she loved a good story. As a child, her mother had read her the most dramatic and riveting of stories. And since her youth she had not felt so moved by a tale.

His voice drew her in. In her mind, she could see the three men and the young girl, locked in a life and death battle, stuck together, forced to rely on one another. In her imagination she watched as they traveled by night, careful to keep the girl and the sword hidden. She saw as the warlord watched the girl, his confusion and feelings evident to no one, masked by his indifference. It was pride and an utter ignorance for emotion that prevented him from acting. But, Kagome could see it in the vision's eyes; he did love the girl, even if he did not have the capacity to show it, to say it, or to act on it.

Her reverie was broken by Taisho's hushed voice.

"Would you like to hear the rest?"

Lights danced across the windows of the limo, shimmering in his hair. It appeared silver in the dark. There was a haunting quality to his hushed tones and for a moment, she had the strangest urge to hold his hand. The thought passed as soon as it came and instead, she clutched her own hands together, nodding her assent.

"Yes."

She heard him draw a deep breath, as if he were going to plunge under water and never resurface.

* * *

"How many years the warlord tracked the demon, I do not know. Time was never an issue for the two beings. They could wait forever to battle, if they so wished. The warlord, although calculating and patient, was not willing to wait for the demon to attack. The warlord had decided that there would be no more innocent deaths. Not if he could prevent it.

The countryside was in a state of turmoil. The demon's power and influence had reached into the very villages of the lord's and shogun's he had swayed to his cause. The warlord met with many sights he had hoped he would never see. The demon's power was greater than he had previously imagined.

The warlord realized quickly, upon several encounters with the demon's minions, that he had, after his failed attempt to possess the sword, turned his attention to acquiring a mythic and powerful jewel. The jewel, however, was not complete. It had been shattered into several pieces long before the demon had ever possessed it. The pieces that the demon had collected were used to increase his power and the powers of his followers.

As the warlord tracked the demon, he collected the pieces of the jewel that the demon had given to his minions. And finally, when they met in battle, the warlord possessed the greater half of the jewel.

The jewel, much like the sword, had a mind of its own. It was crafted so long ago that its history is virtually unknown. The jewel can be used for whatever purposes the owner has. However, the jewel _was_ intended for good. It is interesting to see how the gemstone attempted to change its own fate, to fall into the hands of those who would use it for what it was meant. And the warlord was the one whose hands the jewel desired to be in.

During the battle between warlord and demon, the tainted jewel, the half that was corrupted with malice, was ripped from the demon's grasp. Completing the jewel, the warlord had stripped the demon of his greatest powers. It was a gruesome battle. At its finish the warlord killed the demon, but paid the price for his victory. He lost his arm to the demon. He was not, however, concerned with this. As a powerful magical being in his own right, he was more concerned with the thought that the demon could be resurrected.

He called on his companions, the mage and the forger; the three men consulted the sword and the jewel, asking the powerful objects how to prevent the demon from arising again. They learned that they could seal away the demon… but only for a time. Whether the demon they had slain would return, or another appear that was his equal, they would, undoubtedly face evil of that nature again. But, they learned that they _could _forestall the rise of the one the warlord had vanquished.

What you must understand is that beings of this powerful magnitude can leave behind their existence. It is not dying, per se, but that is the best word to use. Their souls or their powers are so great that they are never completely eradicated. It will return one day, perhaps in a different form, perhaps in the same. There are no set rules when the potency of magic and strength is so great.

And so, the three companions made a decision to prevent, at least for a time, the resurgence of the demon's powers. This agreement took a considerable amount of magic and power to come to pass. Using the sword, the jewel, the powerful weapons that the forger and the mage possessed, as well as their very own power, the men sealed the demon's powers away at the cost of their own. Their weapons and their powers were either lost or diminished considerably. The sword and jewel disappeared into the ether, hidden away from all who had the power to possess it, even the men who fashioned it. The warlord, the forger, and the mage, now but shadows of their former selves, parted. They went to separate corners of the earth to wait for the return of the demon and his power."

Taisho paused in his story, noting that the limo had rolled to an easy stop. Next to him, Kagome was silent. The door of the limo opened and Taisho stepped out. Extending his hand too Kagome, he waited, a silent shadow. The girl hesitated; he could sense her trepidation in the air around her. But then she placed her small hand in his and allowed him to help her from the limo.

Tucking her hand into the crook of his arm, he guided her around the limo and within sight of his home. The estate was small when compared to his mansion in Japan, but he was rarely ever in the states, and the house before them suited him quite well for his short periods of stay. Against the dark sky and the damp circle drive, the house glistened slightly, winking, beckoning them forward.

"I have a small room in the back of the estate where I house the items that I buy and locate while in the states. Do you still wish to see the sword?"

Kagome stepped gingerly on the pavement, careful to avoid the small puddles that had collected with rain.

"I want to see it now more than ever. But," she paused, attempting, he assumed, to formulate a polite question, "is that the end of the sword's history?"

Taisho thought for a moment, "No. But the legend I told you, at least that part of it, has ended. The sword's history after that point is somewhat of a mystery to me. So, while the end of my story is not the end of its history, that is all I can tell you for now." They walked up the steps of the house and through the large glass doors.

Inside, Kagome's eyes widened. The house was immaculate. It was tasteful and undeniably the home of a very well to do man. Taisho did not give her long to study the various rooms and halls that they passed by, he whisked her away, into the farthest hallway and farthest room.

Taisho pulled her into a dark room. By the faint echoes off the darkened walls, she reasoned the room was large, but her eyes had not yet adjusted to the dark to see well. Taisho felt the grip on his arm slacken slightly, and he gently disengaged himself from her.

"I will turn on the lights. Look where you step, your eyes have not adjusted yet."

He slipped away, melting into the darkness so quickly and fluidly Kagome wondered if he had ever been by her side.

Above her, a dim flicker of light began to dispel the darkness. Blinking, she turned in a small circle, her eyes searching the fading dark. Taisho appeared out of the shadows, his eyes gleaming, alerting her to his presence before she saw the outline of his body. Involuntarily, she shivered.

The lights were warming up quickly and she was able to see that they were in a large rounded room. Both the floors and the walls were painted white, no doubt to accentuate the pieces that he had so beautifully displayed throughout the room. There were many pillars of different shapes and sizes, standing erect at various points in the room, meant to hold the objects that he collected. Several of the pillars housed delicate and beautiful artifacts, protected by pristine glass.

She would have taken time to admire all of the pieces if her eyes had not immediately been drawn to the sword, placed strategically atop a pillar in the middle of the room. Without speaking, Kagome weaved her way around the other pillars and stopped in front of the sword. It lay on a white fabric, carefully protecting the weapon, nestling it within the cloth.

Taisho sauntered up to stand behind her. She could feel the intensity of his gaze on her back and her anxiety returned. He seemed to sense this and moved away, walking counterclockwise around the pillar. Kagome kept her eyes on the sword, studying it intently. There was a faint buzzing in her ears. Two large hands appeared in her line of sight. Taisho gripped the glass covering and heedful of the precious sword within, removed the barrier.

Kagome glanced up at him and he stared back, face unreadable.

"May I?" She gestured to the sword.

He nodded shortly.

The girl stepped closer, leaned down, and peered at the sword. The metallic sheen sparkled dully against pristine white. She could see her eyes, reflected back at her, strangely distorted in the metal.

"Pick it up."

At his words, her heart thundered in his chest. Slowly, she looked up, meeting his gaze.

"I don't think-"

"Miss Higurashi, you wish to have opportunities to handle artifacts and pieces. Here is an opportunity, one I gather, you have not had in quite some time. Now, if you please, pick up the sword."

She drew back slightly, "Mr. Taisho?"

He sighed, and whatever it was that unnerved her vanished. "I merely want to offer you an opportunity that you would not normally be presented with."

"Why?"

Averting his eyes to his other pieces, he leaned against the pillar, his large hands resting on the column, careful not to touch the sword. When they met each other's gaze he smiled.

"Because."

It was Kagome's turn to sigh. Deciding that it was better to give into his insistence she nodded her consent, "Do you have any gloves?"

She searched for any that might be lying around. Taisho smirked knowingly and returned to his position behind her.

"No gloves."

"What?" She whirled around to argue with him, but he placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her back toward the sword.

"Why are you arguing with me? You want to do this more than I want you to."

Disliking the way the hands on her shoulders made her stomach flutter, she gracefully slipped from his grasp, pretending to study the sword again.

"Now, pick up the sword."

Kagome swallowed the knot in her throat and reached gently, praying that her epic klutziness did not make an appearance at this exact moment. Fingertips met cool metal, sending goosebumps up her arms. Her hands grasped the hilt and a heady feeling swept over her as the buzz in her ears increased.

"Mr. Taisho, are you sure the history of the sword was just a legend?" It was meant as a jest to both quell her nerves and jostle him out of his sober mood.

"I am not completely convinced that it is not."

Laughing lightly she attempted to check the sudden nausea rising in her stomach. Securing her grasp on the hilt she readied herself. Hoisting it up a few inches she immediately felt the strain of its mass. Before, lying on the cloth, it had given the impression of elegance and splendor, a light but deadly weapon. But now, in her hands, it appeared mammoth and violent. Staggering under its extraordinary weight, she managed to raise it off the pillar before her arms gave way.

She could think of nothing coherent to screech other than, "Oh, oh, oh," as the 10 million dollar sword began to plummet toward the ground.

Strong arms shot out, hands closing over hers, helping her to hold the sword. The first emotion that swept through her from was panic followed quickly by… panic. She had almost dropped a sword that was worth more money than she could possibly imagine and now, as a result, Taisho was flush against her back, his arms framing her body, helping her hold the sword aloft.

"Are you alright?"

She willed her lungs to take in oxygen and her legs to stop shaking. It didn't work, of course, but she tried all the same.

"Ummm," she felt his head bow and tilt to the side in an attempt to see her face.

"Miss Higurashi?"

Kagome's hands were sweating from the rush of adrenaline and the force needed to hold the sword aloft and she squeaked, "I seem to be having trouble with the sword. It's a bit heavy for me, I think. I guess my dreams of becoming a sword wielding maiden will never come to pass."

There was a deep rumbling in her ear; he was laughing.

"I would not give up just yet, Miss Higurashi." She smiled shakily and shifted her feet moving to place the sword back on the pillar.

"Before you put the sword down and run away from me, take a moment to look at it, Miss Higurashi, while it is in your grasp."

Kagome was attempting to argue when her headache returned in full force. Through the strange haze in her head, she heard Taisho speak again.

"Are you using your powers of observation Miss Higurashi? Look at the sword."

She did. Under his hands she parted her fingers ever so slightly, a sliver of the hilt, a violent red, melding beautifully with the dark metal of the blade. There were intricate carvings on the hilt; she could feel the indentions on her skin. Squinting her eyes, she concentrated on the markings, realizing, rather belatedly, that they were not kanji, as she had assumed. They were something entirely foreign to her. And yet, as she felt the pressure of the hilt in her hands, she felt a familiar tug at the back of her aching mind. But she could not unearth any memory of the markings. It eluded her.

"What is the sword's name?"

"What?" Taisho's voice shook with controlled surprise, echoing over the room.

She had no idea where the question had come from. "Er, I just wondered if it had a name."

The man who was currently invading her personal space was silent for many moments. Turning slightly, she attempted to look at him, but upon realizing how close his face was to hers, she snapped her head back around.

"I do not know its name."

"Oh."

She returned her attention to examining the sword, her gaze traveling from the hilt to the blade. About four to five inches across, the sword seemed to resemble a katana. Kagome knew very little about swords, but she did know enough about them to realize that the tip of this sword was what truly set it apart from any other. As the blade curved upward, artlessly beginning its ascent into a point, there was a perfect circle missing from the metal, about 5 inches away from the end, right in the middle of the sword.

Taisho, noting her interest, explained, "The sword was forged to have the circular area missing. It is believed that somehow, the area could be used to channel powerful magic."

Kagome's eyebrows shot up, "What type of magic?"

To her surprise, Taisho began to move her toward the pillar, easily lifting both her arms and the sword. Gently, Kagome set the sword on the cloth. As her hands left the hilt, she felt a sudden absence in her middle and a desolate loneliness filled her.

"I think the discussion of magic and spells should wait for another time. That is a far more extensive topic than the history of the sword." Slowly, carefully, he drew his hands and arms away from her, and took a backward step. She turned and faced him; her head still pounding and her heart still aching.

"I feel strange," she murmured, more to herself than to him.

"Perhaps I should return you to your home. It has been a very long day." He extended a hand to her and she took it gratefully. Leading her toward the exit, she cast the sword one more glance. Through the fog that surrounded her head, wrapping around her thoughts, she saw the sword glow, a deep, dark mist pooling in the air around the blade. Before she could open her mouth to exclaim, Taisho had whisked her through the door and out of his home. By the time she realized that none of her questions had been answered and that she had not even had the ability to ask them, she was back at her apartment, swaying, sinking down onto the couch in confusion.

The unanswered inquiries tumbled around inside a tired, confused, and drained head. When sleep finally claimed her, she dreamt of the warlord and his sword, running toward the enemy, attempting, in vain, to save her life.

* * *

Taisho hovered in the shadows, stalking around the room, as a predator would hunt its prey.

He had found her.

Pacing back and forth in the pitch black, he easily avoided the objects in his path, his heightened senses alerting him of everything in the immediate vicinity.

_He had found her._

The man ran a shaky hand through his silver streaked hair. He was furious with himself. His normally tightly managed emotions were raging out of control. His excitement at finding her and his elation at her ability to touch the sword were currently clashing with his anger.

After he received word that the sword had been unearthed, he had waited. Normally a patient man, Taisho had found himself brooding endlessly for the six months following the sword's discovery. He could not make a move on the sword without its Protector. And without the sword, he could not find the Protector. He waited in the eaves, had his money at the ready and would allow no one else to buy the sword. And then, one day, he had obtained the information that changed everything. The sword was going to the states.

It was then that he allowed himself the opportunity to see it. Before it was transported he had paid a handsome price simply to gaze at the sword. The night after he saw the weapon, he dreamed again. He hadn't dreamed in years. He had been waiting in vain for the sword to show him the way to the Protector.

His visions of the girl were short and vague, but upon seeing her in the coffee shop he knew, without a doubt, that he had found her.

And then she ran into him at the museum. Through his many years and experiences, Taisho had learned the benefit of making pleasantries. As he walked with her through the museum he was grateful he possessed at least a minimal skill for such things. What little charm he did possess had certainly helped in his dissection of the girl's character. By the time they had reached the sword he had been convinced she was the one.

Seeing her with the sword had been sobering. His euphoria left him as he watched her interaction with his weapon. It reminded him as nothing else did, that this was the beginning of what he worst feared. The sword had resurfaced for a reason. And he could only think of one reason so pertinent that he would travel for hundreds of years, seeking one individual and one sword.

The demon had returned.

Taisho growled, his power vibrating over his skin, surrounding him, billowing over his form, lifting the hair off of his collar as if fanned by an invisible wind. Digging sharp fingernails into perfect skin, he calmed. Looking toward the sword, he could still see the cloudy grey mist hovering innocently.

"I venture you find this humorous," he sneered at the weapon which winked at him in return. "I am only trying to do what you want and you make this increasingly difficult for me. I found her but now I must find a way to keep her. And she is most elusive. You did not help today either, sending her into trances."

The mist rose questioningly, baiting him.

"I can hear your voice in my head again. You want me to keep her. You need her. I need her because I need you."

A silent sigh seemed to sweep through the room, dissipating the dark mist over the sword.

"This is going to be difficult," he snarled to himself, stalking out of the room, leaving the sword, seemingly harmless, laying on the pillar.

* * *

Kagome cracked an eye, light spilling over her face, evoking a loud groan. Shutting her eyes again she attempted to bury her head under the pillows. Motion at her bedside caused her to pull back the pillows and open her eyes.

"What in the- GAH!"

A large snout was poking itself in her face.

Ajax was perched on his back legs, front paws leaning on the side of the bed, where Kagome observed, she was in the process of falling off of.

"Sorry, love," she glanced at the clock and righted herself, "I'm late getting your breakfast and I am going to be late for work."

Sitting up she suddenly became aware that she had the massive equivalent of a hangover.

Wait.

Where had she been last night? She was having a difficult time sorting through her dreams to reality.

She sat massaging her temples, at a complete and total loss. She was not only having trouble remembering last night, but the entirety of her yesterday. Ajax bounced on the side of her bed, jostling her thoughts.

"Sorry, pup." Disentangling herself from her sheets she hurried to feed the dog. He ran after her, skidding into the kitchen as he always did. Placing the dish on the floor, she stood, stretching. And then her eyes fell on her coat and purse strewn across the table.

"Oh, no."

Memory flared and she sank down into her kitchen chair, burying her face into her hands.

"What is going on?" nearly weeping, she ran through everything that had happened in the past 24 hours. So, she had nearly barreled over one of the richest men alive, had received a dinner invitation instead of a death threat, and was now questioning her sanity. She wasn't sure which frightened her more, the fact that her time spent with Taisho was not some sort of perverse dream or the fact that her hands were still tingling from the electric energy of the sword. The whispering in her mind abruptly increased and while the headache diminished, giving her the opportunity to think more clearly, her alarm rose.

As soon as she had met Taisho her head had started spinning. If it was his presence and attitude that made her feel so, she wondered how anyone could make eye contact with the man and live to coherently tell the tale. His epic story of magic and swords lingered in her mind. She hadn't actually believed it. It was fascinating and romantic and beautifully tragic. But it was a legend.

But, she bit her nails, thinking as she watched Ajax run into the living room and rub his snout all over the floor, sneezing several times as he did, the sword had a strange effect on her. She recalled her bemusement at her own imagination. She had laughed at herself when she thought she saw the sword flicker at her. She had ignored the strange illusions in her head, the dizzying sensations, the vague memories bubbling just below her subconscious.

She had felt so strange as the men transported the sword into the box, as Taisho had told her a condensed history of the sword. Why hadn't she noticed it? Why hadn't she panicked as she was now?

Taisho knew. He had wanted her to hear the history, had wanted her to come to dinner with him. He had sized her up, coerced her into touching the sword.

"He believes the legend," she breathed. Kagome stood slowly, leaning on the table for support. Recalling the way his eyes gleamed in the dark, the way he scrutinized her, the heavily veiled emotion of his voice, she gasped, "Oh my god, he _is_ the legend."

But what did that make her?

Her head cleared for the first time in 24 hours. She readied herself for work, flying out the door with a, 'Be good, Ajax'. Throwing her things into her car she pulled out onto the street. She had no idea what was happening, but she was going to get some answers.

And she was heading to the only place that could provide them for her.

Worthington Museum.

* * *

_Hope you liked you. I'll update as soon as I can._

_And thanks again to all the reviewers. _


	7. Quitting Time

_Here is chapter 7. I can promise you that after next weekend updates will not be everyday or every other day. I will be back to college and back to working toward a degree. But, In any case I will still update as often as I can. Thanks for the Reviews and the Reads._

* * *

**Chapter 7**

**Quitting Time**

Aeron walked through the parking lot and cursed as a large fat raindrop landed on his glasses. Quickening his step he passed by where Kagome usually parked her car. He smirked. She was running late. If there was one thing about Kagome he understood, it was that she was a creature of habit. She always parked in the same place, always ate at the same coffee shop for lunch, and always, always, was unpredictable. That, apparently, could be habitual. He had not previously been aware of this until he met her.

Habitual unpredictability.

_That_ was an oxymoron. _That _was impossible. No one could be like that. No one but Kagome… who was currently late for work. Aeron mentally shrugged and turned his thoughts to yesterday's events.

What a day that was. The museum had been in an uproar. Nothing at Worthington was ever completed hurriedly. Things moved slowly. Dr. Wesley moved slowly. He valued the time to think, to take time to adjust to change. Never had Aeron seen the man as anything but calm, impersonally cool, and collected. In the wake of Taisho's 10 million dollar proposal, Dr. Wesley disappeared into a different man. Aeron still had a headache from the Wesley's nagging voice. It was no simple feat to ready a museum for a 10 million dollar revenue, but apparently Dr. Wesley thought it should have been.

Entering the museum, Aeron sighed at the monotony of his life. Every damn day he walked through those doors and everyday was very nearly the same as the one before. Aeron would have continued to reflect on his doldrums had a small figure not dashed into the museum, sliding on the marble, latching itself onto his arm.

"What in the bloody hell!?" Looking down, he saw Kagome, a little worse for the wear, hanging onto his arm. Her feet were headed in opposite directions and the only thing keeping her from toppling to the floor was the vice-like grip she had on his forearm. "Kagome!? What do you think you are doing?"

Her face was pale and there was a frantic look in her eyes.

"Aeron, I really need your help."

* * *

Kagome waited for Aeron to speak. Currently, he was staring at her with the most wonderful impression of astonishment. 

"Aeron!" She snapped and he blinked.

"Sorry, it's just. That… it's just that… I don't even know."

She jiggled her leg, biting her lip, "I know it sounds crazy. I think I might _be_ crazy."

Aeron rubbed a hand over the five o'clock shadow on his chin, thinking.

"Well, you weren't wrong about Taisho. He was at our museum yesterday and there was a – uh… presence about him, I suppose."

The girl winced as she bit her lip too hard, making it bleed, "Ok, that's something."

"I honestly don't know much about the man-"

Aeron halted his thought as she ducked under the counter, retrieving her large messenger bag, her voice, rather muffled, reaching his ears.

"I didn't either, but before I ran out of my house this morning, I did a little research." She pulled out her laptop and popped it open. A webpage appeared up on the smudged screen. "Research of an impromptu and potentially misinformed variety." Aeron squinted and leaned foreword to read the words.

"There is hardly anything out there about him. I can understand being private, but no one even knows his first name. He's just Taisho. Granted, this is an assumption I am making after spending only five minutes searching for information about him. But still, you would think that at least one site would have his last name or information about him besides the fact that he is rich." Aeron continued to read, frowning. Kagome tapped her fingers on the wood counter top, gazing out the same window she had yesterday. The coffee shop was busier today and there were patrons lounging outside, taking advantage the pause in the rainfall. "I suppose it is silly to assume that everyone rich and powerful would have information about themselves available to the public, but I was hoping I would at least find out something useful. I even searched for information on the sword." Aeron looked up and met her troubled gaze. " And there was nothing. I mean, nothing other than the news a few months ago. The articles were just about the sword being found and unearthed, nothing about its origin or its history. Not even any speculations. It's as if it appeared out of no where."

"Well, maybe it did." She stared at him. Aeron sighed and sat up straight, pushing the computer back toward her. "Kagome, I would be the last person to believe in magic and legends come to life, but sometimes things really are a mystery."

She shook her head. "I agree with you, but it feels as if there is something more. Something substantial. I'm just scratching the surface of this thing. And I can't help but think that there is either something real about this legend or I am insane."

The accountant studied his knees for a moment and she waited, hoping he would declare her insane and storm out of the coffee shop, cursing her for wasting his time. Then at least she could go to the psychiatric ward feeling as if she had made the right decision.

Aeron regarded her carefully before speaking, "I-" he faltered and smiled, chuckling at himself and the situation before him. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh at this… it's just that it is so far fetched and yet," he shook his head, "I almost believe it, too. Your powers of storytelling must border on otherworldly." His face became darker, losing its humor. "There is something strange about Taisho though, I could sense it." Behind his glasses, his dark eyes deepened, staring off into the distance, "It was as if his authority could not be held in by his body and it spilled out into the room around him. I could feel his presence as if it were something tangible." Kagome nodded and Aeron smiled, "Kagome, you seem to be having an effect on me. I thought you were the only one around here who let their words and imagination run away with them."

She scowled and fought back the urge to swat him on the back of his head. "Stop making fun of me and give me your opinion on the state of my sanity."

"I think that these are strange circumstances. I think that Taisho is an elusive billionaire with plenty of secrets, but, being the practical accountant-"

"Soon to be archaeologist," the girl piped in.

Rolling his eyes he shushed her, "But, being the practical accountant that I am, I am more likely to believe practical over whimsical. I do not think you are crazy. I think that at best, Taisho cast some spell that consisted of good looks and charm in an attempt to woo you and then eventually sweep you off to his palace, marry you, and buy you everything you ever wanted. And at worst," he cast her a wry glance, "you have an overactive imagination."

"I certainly hope so."

Aeron, grimacing, his knees hitting the counter top as he rose to a stand, looked past the girl and out the picture window, "I suggest you speak to Dr. Wesley like you planned. Not directly about the situation, mind you, but bring up Taisho. You said Wesley knew who he was, right? Well, perhaps he knows more than any of those articles."

Kagome slid off the stool and leaned against the counter, staring at the ground. Aeron waited patiently for her to vocalize her thoughts.

" Thank you for listening to me. I feel like a perfect idiot now that I hear myself."

Aeron gestured for her to walk with him. They headed for the exit of the coffee shop and the man held the door open for the girl, "Don't be so sure you are the idiot. I have been known to be wrong now and again."

And despite all of his rationality, he found himself worrying that this might be one of those times.

* * *

Kagome had received not one, but two severe scoldings from Dr. Wesley. The first had been for her late arrival that morning. She had been 10 minutes late with his cup of coffee. Given the morning she was having, Wesley was lucky he did not end up with the coffee poured over his head and down his shirt. Kagome managed to control her rage and took the reprimand with only minimal flashes of defiance. The second time he gave her an earful was a consequence of the extra 15 minutes she had added to her lunch break. Aeron had calmed her down earlier that morning, promising to talk to her over their break. When lunchtime rolled around, she hauled him back to the coffee shop and spilled the entirety of her mixed up life into his lap, consequently making herself late. 

Now, as she opened the door to Dr. Wesley's office, she was praying that nothing else would happen to cause him to snap at her. Given that he had received 10 million dollars a day before, she had half expected him to hug her every time he saw her. This was a large mistake on her part, for as she entered his office; she immediately caught sight of his scowling face.

And it had something to do with her.

Kagome always knew when she was in trouble. Many years of blunders, errors, and general botch-ups had taught her all of the signs. If she was in the clear, the potentially offended person would pay her no never mind. But, if she was once again entangled in some sort of disaster, all eyes immediately fell on her. As Dr. Wesley's did now.

He was standing by his desk, speaking into his phone. As the door clicked shut behind her, watery blue eyes stopped her in her tracks.

Oh, great, she thought, resisting the urge to hide behind the massive antique globe in the corner of his office.

"Yes, yes, I understand fully what he is requesting, I just do not understand-" His frown deepened and the look in his eyes kindled to something near hatred. Kagome began to back from the room. She did not want to deal with this today. Wesley covered the receiver of the phone and waved her forward curtly, "Ms. Higurashi, you have a lot of explaining to do!" Turning his attention back to the phone conversation he barked, "Yes, alright, fine! I will send her. No. Yes. No. I understand that perfectly well. I -"

Even from the distance she stood, Kagome could hear the sound of a receiver being slammed down on the other end of the phone. She was beginning to worry. This had something to do with Taisho. No one else ordered people around like that.

Dr. Wesley, with infinite care and patience, placed the phone on the hook and looked up at his assistant.

"Miss Higurashi, did it slip your mind that you had dinner with Mr. Taisho last night?"

Panic. Deny everything.

"I am not sure how something could slip my mind if it already occurred."

Oh, but for her defiant mouth.

A silvery eyebrow arched, disapproval melting away the grandfatherly kindness that would have been present had he not been a pompous windbag. "What I _meant_ was, did you forget to inform me that you had dinner with Mr. Taisho or were you deliberately trying to keep information from me?'

Kagome almost laughed at his question. She gave him a lopsided grin, anger heating her face. "I did not realize my dinner plans were any of your business."

The aloof smirk was wiped from his face. A surge of triumph welled within the girl. Enough was enough.

She was tired of her treatment at Worthington. Tired of feeling as if she were not intelligent enough to do anything but pour coffee. Tired of intellectual snobs who looked down their noses at her because her degree was not from the most prestigious of universities. Tired of the authority used to demean and belittle her. Since mulling things over earlier that morning, Kagome had realized she could not hang on to her job much longer anyway. Taisho's questions, specifically, if she liked her job, had made her think.

She _didn't_ like her job. And even after all of the strange circumstances surrounding the past day or so, Kagome was grateful to Taisho. He had, as he had stated, given her an opportunity to examine a piece of history and legend. And she was able to do so with her own two hands.

She had not realized the extent of her misery until she held the sword. Her time at Worthington Museum seemed to have dulled her desire for bigger and better things. Not to mention, after the previous day, she was feeling a little bit like a caged animal. Today was not the ideal day to berate a young woman who was questioning her sanity.

And then there was the simple fact that what she did after hours had nothing to do with her boss. She saw no reason to explain to him who she chose to dine with. If she had been anyone else in the museum, she was reasonably certain that Wesley would have jumped up from behind his desk and shook her hand, asking if she and the billionaire were going on another outing and if Taisho was interested in making a donation to the museum. But, no, because she was young, female, and unwilling to bend to his will, she was in trouble.

"Miss Higurashi, as the curator of this museum I ask for a certain amount of respect. Respect that I am not receiving from you at this present moment." He moved to sit behind his desk, gracefully descending into the chair, resting his tweed covered arms on the neatly organized surface. "Now, will you answer my question, please?"

"I will answer it, but only if you acknowledge that you have no business in my personal affairs. After I leave this museum my life is my own." Leveling him with the full intensity of her gaze she could see the cogs and wheels turning inside his head, trying to process what she had said. By the belated reaction, Kagome could tell that the esteemed Dr. Wesley had not, in his wildest dreams, expected her to speak to him in such a way.

What a fool.

"Miss Higurashi you are treading on very dangerous ground." Aged fingers threaded together, a classic sign that he was becoming agitated.

"I beg to differ, sir." She crossed her arms, adopting a seemingly bored air, "I would actually argue that it is you who are on the dangerous ground."

Dr. Wesley's eyes were steel.

"You realize that by your impertinence and generally rude demeanor you are putting your job on the line?"

Kagome tittered prettily. "Job? You call this a job?" Pausing, she fluttered her eyelashes and stroked her chin, "Well, of course it's a job. But when you say that, the way you do, as you squint your eyes and attempt to look superior, you think that this is a job that I_ want_. That I desire above all else. Well," her voice dropped, becoming flat, "you would be mistaken there as well. I am not a secretary. I did not work here for three years to fetch your coffee everyday. If you want someone to make your coffee and place your calls, call a temp agency, because I am done.

I realized a long time ago that you had no intention of promoting me or giving me more opportunities to actually work within my field. But it took me until yesterday to realize that I am not going to wait around for you to fire me." Dr. Wesley's mouth had now dropped open and resembled the look he had given Taisho the day before. "So, Dr. Wesley, before I give you the opportunity to fire me as I suspect you were going to, let me tell you that I resign and I expect my paycheck by the end of the week. It is only Tuesday, that should give you plenty of time to write it out. Now," her voice was sweet as she clasped her hands behind her back, "Did that phone call pertain to me?"

Dr. Wesley glowered, "Yes, it did. Taisho's _people_ called to inform me that you are expected to be out in front of the museum in exactly 15 minutes. It was blatantly obvious throughout the duration of the conversation that Taisho wished me to know he saw you after museum hours. I do believe he wished to get you fired, Miss Higurashi."

"Oh?" Kagome widened her eyes and masked her face in confusion that fooled neither of them.

She no longer cared what Dr. Wesley thought of her. This moment had been a long time coming. If only it had happened sooner, she thought grimly, keeping the sweet smile fixed on her face.

"Yes. I am sure that Taisho was well aware that flaunting your date-"

Kagome sighed in exasperation shaking her head, "Oh, Dr. Wesley, how entirely silly of you. It was not a date at all. He offered me the opportunity to study the sword and divulged his extensive knowledge of the piece." A flicker of resentment told her she had hit the right nerve. "I was very curious about the sword after all, and Mr. Taisho expressed to me his delight at my interest. He went so far as to say that no one quite understood the weapon as I did. Imagine that. Me! With only a bachelor's degree! Truly fascinating, that man."

Dr. Wesley leaned back in his chair, staring at her in bewilderment, "Miss Higurashi, if I were not so appalled I would be duly impressed. But, a word of warning, before you praise Taisho further. Consider why he would call me. Why would he attempt to sabotage you?"

Kagome glanced past him to the bookshelves and she smiled slightly, reminiscing. How they had intimidated her every day for three years! Now, with fresh confident eyes, the anthologies only gave the impression of superficiality. This place was superficial, Dr. Wesley, his precious pieces, and all the people who worked within (save Aeron).

Dr. Wesley did not understand why she was miserable as an assistant because he did not have the passion that she possessed. He would never understand. He could stay here in his tiny prestigious antique hole. Meanwhile, she had the world to conquer. Well, maybe not the world just yet.

First things first. She had a billionaire to question.

"I don't think he was sabotaging me, Dr. Wesley. I think he was trying to help me make up my mind." She turned and walked to the door. As she slipped out she paused long enough to meet his eyes and say, "Actually, if we are talking sabotage, I would think you are more the victim than anyone. As far as I recall, I am the only person in this museum who knows how to work the coffee maker. Good luck getting your caffeine tomorrow morning and all subsequent days thereafter!"

She flashed him a smile and closed the door, leaving him in a horrified silence.

* * *

Kagome did not have many possessions in her office. Perhaps, subconsciously, she had known the day she either resigned or got herself fired would bring about the difficult task of moving said objects from desk to car. Still, with so few items, the box in her hands was slowly slipping. 

Sighing, she recognized a pre-clumsiness moment. Her hands were losing their grip on the box and her feet were becoming less and less coordinated as she hurried down the hall, attempting to find a place to put the box down before all of its contents spilled across the floor. She was determined to leave the museum with her dignity, and spilling her belongings all over the ground would throw a monkey wrench in that plan.

Ahead of her Aeron appeared. When he saw her predicament he hurried forward with an eye roll and grabbed the box as it started to slip from her clutches.

"Thanks," she huffed, blowing her bangs out of her flushed face.

"So, you are quitting. I told you to ask about Taisho not harass Wesley to the point of losing your job."

Kagome shifted the box and took it back from him, balancing it on her hip, "Oh, it was bound to happen anyway. I never really fit in here. I mean look at me. Do I look Worthington worthy?"

Aeron laughed and shook his head, "I don't know if looks have anything to do with it. I think you might just have too much personality for these dusty old scholars." They walked slowly down the hall and Aeron grabbed the other side of he box and helped her to carry it. "I gather this has something to do with Taisho?"

She shrugged noncommittally, her green eyes clouded. She wished it didn't have anything to do with him. "I guess in an offhanded sort of way."

"Liar," Aeron's smile was knowing, "He made you think about all that you were missing, didn't he?"

"Of course he did. He whirled in here, Mr. I can do anything because I am rich and educated and I have authority, and he made me think. He is a world traveler ten times over. And there is just something fascinating about him." She was far too shy to also admit that she thought he was incredibly handsome and mysterious and everything she could never be. "I actually had the chance to hold that sword, Aeron. It was amazing. I kept wondering what it would have been like on that dig. To have found the sword. To have found anything at all! It would have been amazing."

Aeron held open the door for her and she stepped out into the cool breeze. She could smell moisture on the air. Turning her face upward she saw dark thunderheads over the city, slowly overtaking the sunshine, leaving the spring day with a chill.

Kagome stopped short as her gaze returned to earth and Aeron bumped into her. There was a moment where four hands fumbled, attempting to keep the box from falling to the sidewalk.

"I guess he's back," the man next to her muttered, eyeing the black limo before them with distaste.

"I guess so."

The driver of the limo appeared and she gave him a little smile of recognition. He nodded to her and opened the limo door.

Taisho slid out of the limo, looking every bit the man he was said to be. Dark and light, scowling lips, piercing gaze.

His eyes swept over the scene before him and Kagome imagined he was taking in a careful assessment, judging, deciding. The girl sighed and placed the box on the ground. When she stood straight, she saw that Taisho's focus was on the man behind her.

"Mr. Taisho," She spoke his name and his eyes snapped back to her face.

"Miss Higurashi." Silence stretched between them. Cars rolled by on the street, the sound of their tires on the wet pavement almost deafening. Kagome could hear music playing from an art gallery down the street. The faint notes lilted sweetly on the brisk air. Deep in her mind she felt a sudden shift and Taisho seemed to sense it, too.

"You have questions to ask me."

Her stomach clenched uncomfortably and she began to feel lightheaded. She had begun to realize that this feeling proceeded strange flashes of memory and thought. On key, ideas and feelings flashed in her head, but they were not her own. They belonged to someone else. Or something else.

"Yes." She studied his face and saw the barest of smiles glimmer in his eyes. "One condition." He waited. "You answer all of my questions."

"Of course."

Behind Kagome, Aeron shifted, and she turned, casting him a look. But Aeron did not meet her eyes. He was, instead, watching Taisho. Kagome felt a shiver pass over her skin. And for a moment she thought she sensed something from Aeron, something that reminded her of Taisho. It felt like pure raw power.

"I'll just go put this in my car. Can you wait a moment?"

Taisho nodded and she picked up the box, glancing at the two men, uneasy, feeling that if she left them alone, she would be indirectly responsible for whatever they did to each other in her absence.

* * *

"So, it _was_ you in the coffee shop yesterday." 

Taisho regarded the accountant carefully, amber eyes impassive. He was far too composed to let the other man see his shock. For a moment, he was silent, analyzing, allowing the silence to grow to inconceivable lengths.

"You saw me?" His cold voice did not betray his emotions either.

"Why wouldn't I have seen you?" The other man asked, puzzled. "You were sitting in the back, staring at us. At the time I thought that you were looking out the window and your gaze happened to be drawn to us. Kagome is rather loud, anyway, she has a habit of drawing attention to herself with that personality of hers."

Taisho allowed the conversation to divert, but not for one moment did he forget the man's words.

_Why wouldn't I have seen you?_

Because, he thought, angry, he should not have been seen by anyone. He was supposed to have been invisible to the human eye.

The other man did not seem to understand Taisho's confusion. And Taisho decided that en lieu of more pressing matters he would let this subject rest. For now. He would ponder it later, when the immediate danger was not so great, when he had time to consider the man before him. To study the man's strange aura. An aura that was not unlike Kagome's.

Kagome appeared around the corner of the block, returning from the parking lot, causing both men to break their intense gazes and glance in her direction. As she made her way toward them, the wind whipped by her, and although Taisho was sure she did not notice, he could see the way it moved with her, sighing as she took a step, sweeping around her, lifting her dark hair to halo her face and head.

Yes, his thoughts echoed in his head, he had found the Protector.

* * *

Taisho would not speak throughout the duration of the limo ride. She was beginning to tire of his self-assured half smile. She was also beginning to tire of his ability to silence her without speaking a word. 

Staring out the window, watching as the clouds readied themselves to l loosen their tears, she could feel the thrumming in her blood increase. Vaguely, she recalled times when she had felt like this. However, it had been much weaker in the past. There had been days that she rolled out of bed and she had sensed that something the day had something in store for her. Usually it was something unfortunate. On days such as those, she had thought it was simply her gut, her instinct that told her something was off. This feeling in her now, was something entirely different. It was the gut feeling maximized by ten.

Closing her eyes, she noted that this, this, _thing_ in her mind, had affected her senses as well. Although she was still struggling with the strange whispers in her head, a hint of a voice that was not hers, she could feel this raw energy applied to other parts of her, compensating for the sated condition of her mind.

The breeze surged into the car through the lowered windows. She could both taste and smell the salt of the sea, nearly tangible on her tongue. By all rights, she should have been panicking again. Instead, she gave into the overwhelming urge to drift into reverie.

That damned sword.

In her mind she could see it, glinting in the midst of battle, sheathed and secured around a waist, dragging on the ground, held by an arm that was not strong enough to lift it.

Kagome was startled awake by the hand on her shoulder.

The umber and gold eyes of Taisho startled her, wrenching a broken gasp from her throat. He drew away but said nothing; instead he took her hand in his and drew her out of the limo. Heavy limbs lumbered gracelessly. Taisho slipped an arm around her shoulders and helped her to walk.

Kagome cracked a heavy eyelid and was met with a strange sight. They were at the ocean. Taisho's limo pulled away from the beach front, leaving them to stand alone on the boardwalk. Before her there was a long pier, leading out to a vantage point. The waves lapped lazily at the rocky shore. Not too many miles to the east, she could see the city; straight before her was the other side of the bay, piers similar to the one they stood on dotting the shoreline. Kagome felt her legs start to move, Taisho guiding her down the length of the pier.

It seemed to take her years to reach the end. Once there, Taisho leaned her against the wooden beams of the guardrail. Numb hands wrapped around the wood, heedless of splinters biting into delicate skin.

"Did she always feel like this?" Kagome mumbled, fighting her eyelids' wish to close.

"No. It passes."

Kagome did not question how he knew whom she was speaking of. Nor did he find the need to question who she referenced.

They watched the water reflecting the dark grey clouds and the skyscrapers of the city. The wind was picking up, blowing the salty breeze directly into their faces. Taisho leaned his elbows on the guardrail, staring down into the water.

"You wanted to speak to me?"

His voice was almost lost in the wind. Kagome willed herself to wake, willed herself to gain control. The numbness lifted enough for her to turn to him and say, "You are the man in the legend aren't you?"

Taisho did not look at her. His eyes were dark. A light mist began to fall and the man blinked, shifting his gaze to the sky.

"I was that man once. I am no longer."

Kagome shook her head and as the mist touched her skin. It seemed to have a cleansing effect on her mind.

"How is that even possible!?" She hugged her arms, trying to warm herself.

Taisho cast her a tired look, "As impossible as it sounds, I can assure you it is true." He hesitated before he spoke, "I do not know what to tell you to convince you that it is truth. I suppose the only way is to show you."

"Oh, no, you aren't showing me anything else until you answer my questions."

Taisho finally looked at her. She was furious.

"Very well."

Kagome stepped back from the end of the pier and began to pace, her wits momentarily returning.

"If everything you told me was true," she looked up at him and he nodded.

"It was."

"Then what are you?" Kagome stopped her feet, maintaining a good distance from the man.

Taisho sighed, "I am… I was a being of immense power. Call me what you will. Demon, god, spirit, sorcerer, there is no real word for myself. And slapping a name on what I am will do you no good. I was born hundreds of years ago. My perception of time is rather skewed; I cannot give you the exact date. I was the warlord I told you of. I was the one who commissioned the sword. And," the waves behind him began to churn with the insistent gusts of wind, "I am the one who destroyed the demon."

Kagome shivered, a chill making its way up her spine.

If Taisho was telling the truth, if she was not crazy, if he was not crazy, that meant only one thing.

"And I am the one who will extinguish him again."

"Again?" The whisper from her lips cracked, revealing her trepidation.

Taisho nodded, his face fierce with his fury, "Again. He has returned."

* * *

_Sorry. I always end in a type of cliffhanger. It's how I write. Hope you enjoyed it. I will update as soon as humanly possible.  
_


	8. Protector Found

_Thanks for reading and reviewing. Chapter 9 will be up sometime in the next 24 hours. Enjoy! _

* * *

**Chapter 8**

**Protector Found**

Taisho waited for his words to sink in. The girl stared at him for a moment, her face pinched, hands wrapped around her upper arms to contain her trembling.

Her teeth chattered as she spoke, "Demons aren't real."

Taisho removed his suit jacket and held it out to her. Slowly, she extended a hand and grasped it, pulling it over her small frame.

"Then do not call him a demon and accept that he is real anyway."

After threading her arms through the sleeves of his jacket, she busied trembling fingers with buttoning its front, refusing to meet his eyes.

"He is real, Miss Higurashi."

At the sound of her name she looked up sharply and he leaned back against the rail, still under her scrutiny.

Rubbing her face with her hands she let out an exasperated cry. "I don't even know where to begin. I have so many questions I think my head might burst open. And it's not because this is completely illogical." She removed her hands from her face, slightly red from the pressure she had applied around her eyes, "It's because somehow, this makes more sense than anything I have ever heard. Why would that be Taisho!? Would you care to enlighten me?"

"You want to hear everything, then?"

"Of course I want to hear everything! You just told me that demons exist and that you are some supernatural being that has lived for centuries. This is not how I usually spend my Tuesdays. So, yes, please, tell me exactly what I am entangled in!"

Taisho scowled. He was not pleased that she was yelling at him. Trying to understand the extent of her vexation he let the anger pass and spoke.

"I was the warlord I told you of. I crafted the sword. The sword sent me to find the girl. When I brought her back to the sword and she could communicate with it, I was informed that she was its Protector and in turn, I was her Protector. I needed the sword and I needed her. As I told you, much of my soul and powers were poured into the blade, it housed much of my power. Without it, I am much weaker. I could not adequately protect the girl and the sword so long as I could not wield it. While I attempted to wield the sword we were forced to flee from our enemies because of the loss of my power."

Kagome took a few shaky steps toward the wooden rail, and grasping onto it tightly, she turned back to Taisho.

"Why did the sword want her?"

"I do not know the exact reasons."

Her face darkened, eyes blazing angrily. "Then what do you surmise?"

Taisho blinked as the misty rain fell into his eyes, stinging the sensitive tissue. He weighed the consequences of telling her. Deciding it was better to be forthright, he spoke quietly, the lapping of the waves nearly drowning out his voice.

"I believe she was needed for her judgment. She was not just a communicator between the sword and myself. She gave the human qualities of emotions and truth to the inanimate object. Essentially, she protected it from the enemies that came to claim it."

"You hesitated to tell me that. Why?"

Taisho turned back to the water, disliking her gaze.

"The sword gave me a vision, directions, if you will, to find the girl and bring her to it. And I did just that. After the demon was destroyed, my companions and I made the necessary arrangements to dispense of our most powerful weapons and in doing so, seal away the demon. The loss of our powers was a necessary sacrifice to prevent his evil from returning sooner. Before I lost the sword and most of my abilities with it, the sword gave me a vision of the next Protector. There was no warning or hint of when I would find this one. Only vague details. Not images so much as feelings and ideas. I did not know when I would find this person. I lived for hundreds of years, in relative peace, always aware of the world around me, knowing one day the sword would reappear, a warning that the demon had as well. I waited and bided my time, searching for the Protector, waiting for any hint that the malevolent being had returned.

And then, a few years ago, I could feel the change in the air. I still retain some of my powers, my ability to sense auras and changes in the realm around me. I could feel the familiar essence of an entity well known to me. It was the sword. For centuries it was beyond my awareness. I could not sense it. But upon the return of this aura, I knew what I worst feared had come to pass.

The sword's location remained a mystery to me. Even if I had known where it was hidden, I would not have been able to touch it, to unearth it, or to keep it safe. I needed the Protector. My dreams returned. The sword was communicating with me again. Only, this time, I was not to bring the Protector to it. The sword would bring me to her."

Kagome's face had drained of all color and her green eyes had darkened, reflecting the bleak day that enveloped the city.

"Me."

"Yes, you. The sword was unearthed several months ago and then transported to the states. I followed it, knowing it would inevitably lead me to you. I hesitated in telling you because I knew it would frighten you."

Kagome chewed on her thumbnail, looking as if she might be sick all over the pier, "But how could it be unearthed? You said that no one could touch it. You said only the girl, the Protector, could touch it."

Taisho folded his arms over his shirt, which was becoming increasingly drenched by both the spray of the ocean and the rain from the clouds.

"I believe when I relinquished my claim on the sword and it disappeared, it became dormant. Upon reawakening, it was… different. I believe, in its desire to find you, it allowed others to handle it. Those who did not know of its immense power. I believe that if I, or any other being that knew of its power, had tried to touch it, the full effect of its power would have been unleashed. However, now that you have made contact with the weapon, I theorize it will reject any other's touch."

Kagome closed her eyes, deliberately measuring her breaths. "I cannot be the Protector. I am Kagome Higurashi and I am nothing extraordinary. I am not part of a fairy tale, I am not some mythic keeper, and I am not part of some epic quest. You are insane. Better yet, _I_ am insane."

Taisho strode forward and took her by the shoulders. The sudden contact made her snap her eyes open and search his face worriedly.

"You are the Protector and I will prove it to you. I need you to understand what I am saying, Miss Higurashi. Your life is in the balance."

"My life?" Her voice caught in her throat, emerging hoarsely.

"Yes. For a moment, pretend that all I am saying is real. If I can sense you, if I know you are the Protector, why would others not know? The discovery of the sword was broadcast over the entire world. Do not think for one moment that my enemies do not know that I have possession of the sword. That they do not know of you."

"What!?" She squirmed out of his grasp, shoving him off her, sending him back a foot. "You know, I have half a mind to drive the point of my heel through your foot. If you are who you say, it wouldn't hurt much but it would give me a wonderful sense of satisfaction."

Taisho smiled grimly, but his gaze remained penetrating. "I do not believe that would help our current situation," his reply was smooth, but the dangerous threat of power rippled beneath his light tone.

"You don't scare me. And I certainly don't have to be nice to you now that I no longer have a boss who needs your money. I can say whatever I damn well please. And don't you dare try and shut me up. I didn't ask for this. I would suggest you listen to me when I say this: you may be bigger than me, more powerful, and far richer, but if this whole fantasy is true, then you need me. And if you need me, you had best get used to being polite because I do not take well to men who think they have authority over me. You may be a mythical being who is immune to time but I am very creative when it comes to getting even. And I will find a way to make you suffer if you cannot afford me the tiniest amount of respect. Are we clear?"

Taisho regarded her for a moment, his eyes flashing with anger, "Very."

"Good. Now, despite the fact that I think I am off my rocker, I still want answers. So I will indulge you a while longer and ask you a few questions."

Taisho, despite his fury at her insolence, nodded his assent. Planting his feet firmly on the ground, he prevented his darker side from emerging. As it was, it whispered in his mind, murderous rage tickling, attempting to overwhelm his reserve. Since she had touched the sword, he could feel his power, just beyond his reach, teasing him, reminding him of the strength he had once possessed, so long ago.

"Why would these… these… these…"

"Demons?" He interjected roughly.

Glaring at him she held up a finger, silencing him despite his fierce desire to clamp his hand over her mouth and throw her into the ocean for her impudence.

No, no, the calmer part of his mind thought, you need her; you do not want to repeat past mistakes.

"Why would these _demons_," her voice grated harshly over the word, "want me?"

"The same reason they wanted the first Protector. If they kill me or take the Protector, they have access to the sword. Until the master is chosen, the only person who can touch the sword is the Protector. You. I do not think you want to be in their hands. There are many ways that my enemies are cruel and in their thirst for my power and my weapon, you would be a mere casualty. After they used you to get to the sword, you would be killed… at best. There are far worse things, however, than death."

"Used me?" Dark waves fell into her face, heavy from the rain. She struggled with the jacket, trying to free her hands from the long arms, pushing the locks out of her eyes.

"To anyone who desires the sword you are either the key or the lock. Without you the sword cannot be wielded. You are directly tied into the choosing of the master. Anyone who desires the sword would use you for this end."

She was shocked into silence. Taisho watched as the color of her irises lightened, something dawning behind and within those large eyes. Her feet carried her a step back from him, slowly, as if he were a feral beast and she did not wish to frighten him into attacking her.

"Would that include you?"

Taisho was losing her.

No! He could not lose her. It was necessary to both their survival and the survival of the greater world that she understand what he was saying.

"No. I would not hurt you. As I have said, I am your Protector now. I need you as much as you need me."

Indignation returned and she stamped her foot onto the boards of the pier, "I don't need anyone! You talk as if I were some idiot girl who needs rescuing. I can assure you that I am the last person who needs to be saved. You think you can sweep into my life and weave some story and expect me to give into all this 'Protector' nonsense? Then, I think you have been misinformed as to how the real world works, Taisho. In the real world, you can't come waltzing into some poor assistant's life and tell her what to do." The laugh that rolled off of her was ripe with her anger, confusion, and distress.

The man gritted his teeth and sighed, releasing the tension that had built in his tall frame.

"I will show you now, then, and you can decide if you wish me to explain more."

Kagome shook her head, taking another step back, "No, I don't want you to show me anything. I want you to stay right where you are. I, however, am going to walk down this pier, find a pay phone, and call a taxi."

"Miss Higurashi, wait."

He walked after her, easily catching her. His hand snaked out and grabbed her arm, jerking her around.

"Calm down," he murmured as she prepared to fight him off. "Look at me."

Slowly, she complied. When her eyes met his he smiled inwardly. Despite her confusion and fear he could still see the defiance, hidden beneath the surface of her worry. "I will not hurt you. And that is more than many can say, human or otherwise. The sword gives you the ability to perceive at greater lengths. Do you feel as if I will hurt you? Deep down, do you honestly believe that I will harm you?"

Kagome wriggled out of his grasp, but did not take her eyes from his face.

"No."

He nodded, satisfied, "Good. Now, are you calmed down enough to finish questioning me?"

Kagome set her jaw, the angry look returning to her eyes, "I can hear the sarcasm in your voice. Stop belittling me and treating me like a child. I have every right to be upset and I don't need your snide comments or attitude about my very-rational-given-the-situation behavior." Taisho said nothing. "If you are so all powerful, why did you have body guards at the museum?"

This was a question Taisho had not expected. She was very perceptive. Every time he thought he had her figured out, placed in a neat little box inside his mind, she did something that both infuriated and appealed to him.

"Such things are for appearance. It gives the impression of normality. While I am perfectly capable of handling myself, others might find it odd that a very rich man does not fear for his safety, and question my behavior. Since, in this day and age, one cannot, apparently, be rich without being famous, I have gained a sort of celebrity that I did not want. I must now work with extra care, to make my life seem as normal as possible."

The girl rolled her eyes, "Taisho, that is virtually impossible. Even if you were not some otherworldly being, when one is a billionaire, it is bound to attract a little attention." She paused, her face softening in her thoughtfulness, " Since you are semi-famous, do your enemies ever come after you?"

He smirked, "The world is large and I am still a powerful being."

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"On occasion. But, it is never anything that I cannot deal with."

She raised an eyebrow at his superior tone, "Ah, well. I have a question about the blade." She turned and began to walk away from the end of the pier, disliking the way the waves were beginning to crash against the shore. Taisho moved to her side, clasping his hands behind his back, staring forward, eyes ever watchful. "It did not appear to be as heavy as it turned out to be. Why was that?"

"The sword by itself is not heavy. It is rather light and you would easily be able to lift it. However, if you recall, the sword has magical properties that were fused within during and after the forging. That is where the weight is added."

The girl cast him an incredulous look, "From spells? They manifest themselves physically? As mass?"

Taisho looked down at her, his face devoid of any recognizable emotion, but his smile was not far, she could see his lips twitch, "I thought you did not believe my story."

"I never said I did."

Her surly response prompted the man to avert his gaze, "Yes, the spells do manifest physically. With the amount of pure energy that is within the weapon it is no wonder the wielder must possesses a certain amount of strength."

They walked silently then, lost in their separate thoughts, but both were worrying about the immediate future. At the end of the pier, Kagome turned to Taisho. He was relieved to see she had calmed considerably.

"Why are you telling me all of this?"

Low rumbles of thunder echoed above them, making her wince and shrink further into the suit jacket draped around her body. The rain turned from mist to downpour, the wind taking its lead, blowing past them with force that surprised her.

"What do you mean?"

He watched her shiver from the chill of the rain, reminding him of another woman, now but a distant memory. At this thought, the brushes of familiar power grew into a dull roar, and Taisho fought to control his mind, furious that his sword was using his own power against him. The sword, even from the great distance, still had a hold on him, speaking insistently in his mind, urging him to bend to its will.

Gritting his teeth, he hunched slightly, waiting for the sickening feeling to pass. If this was anything like what the girl before him was feeling, he regretted thinking less of her for her inability to control her trances. He had never experienced the sword's power to such a degree.

Stop, he commanded in his head. The sword's insistent, surging protest dimmed. Taisho straightened and saw Kagome, watching him with a horrified interest.

"I need your help," he finally managed to snarl, still struggling to gain control.

"I figured that out." She snapped.

She was not going to help him. He still had to convince her. Setting his ego aside, he spoke, glad that they were alone with the wind and the rain.

"Miss Higurashi, this is not an easy feat for a man such as I. I have poured my very essence into a weapon and I should wield it by right. But I designed it to choose the master… at a great cost to myself. The sword lives to test me. When I last wielded it, I was constantly battling to balance its immense power. I am not seeking you because I want the sword for destruction, or money, or glory, or power. I seek to possess the sword because it was forged in order to stem wars and evils. Imagine, then, the predicament that I am currently in, when the Protector of the sword I need to vanquish the devil himself, will not even listen to what I have to say. When the key to the very survival of the world you see before you," she scoffed and he reached out through the searing pain of his head and turned her to face him, forcing her to look into his face, "is refusing to even listen to my words. I can see it in your eyes, you understand what I am saying, but you believe you are too rational to even consider it as truth. But, it makes sense to you. It is as if you have suddenly fit the last puzzle piece into the picture before you. You thought you had an overactive imagination; no doubt, always repressing the thoughts and signs that told you the world is not what it seems. Tell, me, if you could do anything, what would you do?"

Kagome, unable to break free of whatever spell he was casting over her, she swallowed, attempting to speak. He almost lost her whisper as another surge of power shot through his head.

"I would have adventures."

Taisho smiled stonily, "And you will make a Protector, yet. Allow me prove that you are not crazy. Let me show you the sword once more. You saw it after you touched it last night. Did you see what happened to it?" Kagome's eyes widened as the memory returned. "Had you forgotten?" He frowned, "The sword has a way of changing things in here," he gently her temple gently, "to better suit its will. In any case, I can show you, right now, if you wish, that I am not lying to you."

The pain lifted, leaving him oddly empty. Although it had been excruciating, the will of the sword, it brought back familiar memories of the strength he had once possessed. Squaring his shoulders, he released the girl, giving her space.

Kagome turned from him and paced, biting her knuckles. Taisho waited, still, only his eyes following her movement.

The sound of a car made both man and girl look up. His limo pulled up beside them. Kagome stood, her hands on her hips, back to Taisho, apparently staring at the city to the east. The gravity of the situation seemed to suck all of the defiance and anger out of her; her shoulders were bowed inside the dark suit jacket.

With the waves crashing against the shore and the rain creating a surreal haze that enveloped the city, Taisho waited, trying to ignore the fact that the fate of the very world rested on this tiny woman's shoulders. When she turned to him, the skepticism had been replaced with an emotion he could not name. He resisted the urge to grab her, pull her up on her toes and demand to know what she was thinking. But her answer thrust the thought from his mind.

"I will go with you once more."

He could breathe again.

Good, the sword's satisfaction glimmered, and Taisho could feel its gratitude through the rain.

Apparently, Kagome had felt it, too, for she tipped her face skyward, and closed her eyes, listening to the might of the storm.

* * *

Kagome shivered, wishing she had been smart enough to bring an umbrella with her. Of course, she admitted to herself, at the time, she had been rather incapacitated. She was glad to know, sitting once again in the limo that Taisho could be subject to the sword as well. She smiled complacently at the man next to her, reveling in his discomfort. He was very adept at hiding it. If she did not have her strange connection with the sword, she probably would not have noticed. It was also interesting; she thought silently to herself, the difference in the way the sword interacted with them.

Kagome had never been physically harmed by its intrusion into her mind and body. Its presence was alien, and at sometimes, sharp, but never had it pushed her to the point of physical torment. She wondered if the sword were punishing Taisho, attempting to teach the man a lesson. But, as this thought crossed her mind, she mentally swatted it away. She was not, _not_ convinced. She did not believe the sword was communicating with either of them. It was not plausible.

Next to her, Taisho sat, back rigid, eyes closed, large hands placed face down on his thighs, meditating. Before climbing into the limo he had muttered something about 'Not wanting to be disturbed' by either Kagome or the sword.

But, his eyes snapped open when the limo stopped. Before the limo had even come to a complete halt, Taisho opened the door, pulling her, rather unceremoniously, out of the vehicle and onto the drive.

The rain was now coming down in sheets and she was unhappily soaked through all of her clothes. Kagome became aware of the tight grip Taisho had on her upper arm. There was a strange insistence there that worried her. Looking upward, she saw something in his eyes that she had not seen before. Roughly, he pushed her through the doorway of his home, slamming the door behind him.

It was dark inside. The grey half-light from the afternoon did little to dispel the shadows lurking in the corners. Kagome started to move away from Taisho but he kept his hand securely fastened about her arm. Attempting to break his hold on her she pulled away, the rain on her skin and clothes making the effort easier. Taisho did not let her get far. When he grabbed her arm again, yet to utter a word, she turned to say something to him, her mood shifting like quicksilver.

The man clamped a hand over her mouth and she nearly bit him for his brass audacity. But, before he could sink her teeth into his hand he shook his head at her, the absolute authority in his eyes stilling her fight.

That was when she sensed it.

It was something innately wrong. Kagome felt an odd sensation at her back, as if someone had run a finger over her bare skin. She stiffened at the intrusion on her body and mind. Taisho, for his part, pulled her back toward him, sensing the prod at her aura. Someone was searching for her.

His eyes narrowed, and not for the first time, he wished he had his trusted weapon with him.

"What was that?" Kagome whispered, unconsciously moving closer to him.

He was silent as his eyes roved over the entranceway of the house, searching for things that she could not see.

The hand on her arm tightened infinitesimally, "Come, we must go to the sword."

He led her slowly down the hallway, the same route she had taken only the night before. Distantly, Kagome wondered where all his staff had gone. As she recalled, the night before, there had been several people just inside the doorway, waiting and ready to take care of Taisho's every whim. Now, the estate was silent, dark, and, if she had to guess, completely empty. Empty except for the peculiar presence hovering somewhere nearby.

When they reached the room in which the sword was housed, Taisho let her go and stalked around the room, his eyes scanning for the threat. Walking up to the farthest wall, he gazed out the huge picture window, taking an assessment of the grounds outside.

When he seemed satisfied, he turned to her. Kagome had already sunk down into a chair, watching him warily from across the room questions and concerns swirling in her head, making her dizzy.

"I must check on something. Stay here. Do not leave this room." He crossed the floor and stopped at the pillar that housed the sword. The case surrounding the sword was different than the one she had seen the night before. This case opened from the top, secured by a latch on the side. Taisho quickly opened the case top and looked back at the girl. "You may touch the sword if you wish. It might answer some of your questions." He left her then, walking out the door, securely shutting it behind him. At the sound of the door closing, Kagome jumped.

She had not realized how eerily quiet the room was. Outside, the rain cascaded down the large windowpane, obscuring her view of the land outside. Sighing, the girl tried to make herself small in an attempt to warm her body and ease the fearful knot in her viscera.

"How did I get myself into this?" She moaned to the empty room.

A glint of metal caught her eye. The sword was beckoning her, shinning in the semi-dark.

Slowly, Kagome rose to a stand, wincing as her drenched feet slipped in her shoes. Carefully, she stepped out of them, her bare feet meeting the cold floor, sending chills rippling through her body. Steeling her nerve, she took a few tentative steps forward and then stopped, hesitant. The strange presence that she had felt earlier was momentarily forgotten as she stared at the blade, listening to it in her mind.

It wanted her to come closer.

She took another step, licking her suddenly dry lips, reminding herself to breathe. Indistinct and transparent lines appeared around the weapon, slowly becoming cloudier. As if in a trance, Kagome closed the remaining distance, placing her cold hands on the glass case, peering down at the sword. The misty substance rose, sliding over her fingers, and up her shoulders. She resisted the urge to pull away and run from the room. However, it did not want to hurt her, and this knowledge eased her misgivings.

It was almost as if the sword was saying hello. Kagome, in her wonder, reached, and stroked the flat of the blade, her fingers tingling much as they had the night before. A feeling of contentment sparked where her fingers brushed and she realized the power of the weapon was relieved. The Protector had been found. The Protector had been found and she was safe. Safe with the sword.

She continued to run her fingers across the cool metal, the most burning question in her mind finding its way to her lips.

"Why me?"

She was answered with nothing but silence.

Her gaze fell on a sheath, placed next to the sword, its blood red sash falling across the blade of the sword. She had not seen it the night before. It was as beautifully constructed as the sword, with the same unfamiliar etchings that the hilt boasted. The scabbard case was constructed of the same metal that the blade was made of, fashioned to fit only this blade. Kagome could not recall where she had ever seen anything so breathtaking. Her sensitive fingertips danced lightly over the indentations and etchings of the protective case, marveling at it, wondering how long it took to construct such a lovely piece of art.

A sudden sharp pain in her head jerked her thoughts away from the sword and its sheath. Squinting through the dark, she peered the window. For a moment, she thought she saw a dark shape looming and her heart skipped a beat. She remained standing, completely still, fingers still resting on the sword, waiting to see if the shadow she had seen was real. When, after a few moments, nothing had happened, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Taisho's tale of demons and world destruction had addled her brain. Of course, she was currently being enveloped in a misty substance produced by an ancient weapon, so, perhaps, she thought, there was something to his story.

Behind her, she heard a noise, like the creak of a floorboard. Looking over her shoulder, she saw nothing but the securely fastened door and the empty pillars. Furrowing her brow, she was about to lean down to examine the sword further when the creeping sensation returned, winding its way up her spine. She shivered, and the mist of the sword darkened, moving closer, as if to comfort her.

"Taisho?"

Nothing.

Taking her hands from the sword, she stepped toward the door, feeling a spike in the foreign energy. The cloudy fog of the weapon trailed after her, billowing off her body as she moved through the room.

"Taisho?"

Still nothing.

Stepping up to the door, she reached tentative fingers out, brushing the wood. Something cool, like a frosty breeze, brushed a wayward strand of hair that fell across her cheeks.

Sucking in her breath, she whirled around, feeling the presence return somewhere behind her. The room was still empty.

"Hello?"

Her heart thudded in her ears. Something was wrong. Her skin crawled and her hands began to sweat.

"Is someone there?"

The air began to hum. At this, she jumped away from the door and scurried into the middle of the room. She could feel it disrupt the sensitive hairs on her arms.

_Not someone, precisely. Something._

Kagome stiffened, her eyes darting around the room, trying in vain to locate the source of the voice.

"Taisho was wrong. I am going insane."

Muttering feverishly; she backed up, her hands searching for something to hold, something to latch onto. She backed up into one of the other columns and her fingers curled around it. Glancing down at the pillar, she took a quick assessment of the object lying within its glass case. It was a sword, fashioned from wood. Distantly, Kagome could recall seeing such objects when she lived in Japan. It was a training weapon, a bokken.

The shift of the ugly presence snapped her attention forward.

"Hello?"

Silence.

The unwelcome raking of invisible claws on her skin caused Kagome to dart to the side, gasping with fright and astonishment. Raising her fingers to her face, she felt the warmth of blood, oozing from the three scratch marks along her upper cheekbone.

A rumbling laugh pulled her eyes from her fingertips to the picture window. There, through the cascading water on the windowpane, she could make out a dark blurry shape, drifting, hovering, and scratching at the glass. Dark, thin shapes struck at the glass, silent, an extension of the larger mass. The darkness bloomed around the being as if it were growing, feeding on the fear that was steadily rising inside of Kagome.

_Are you its Protector? _

The voice reminded her of nails on a chalkboard, ripping through her mind with an intensity that made her clutch her hands to her head, nearly screaming from the intensity of its insistence. Stumbling forward, she said nothing, hands still clutched to her head.

_Are you its Protector?_

Kagome ground her teeth against the pain as it sharpened, tears springing to her eyes, "Who are you?"

_It does not matter. Give the sword to me and I will end your suffering. _

Staggering to the sword case, Kagome gripped the glass between her fingers. Gasping, she put her weight on the pillar, hoping her knees wouldn't give out. Looking up at the window, she could see claws raking along the glass, interrupting the flow of the rain.

"I don't think that would be in my best interest," she managed to gasp out, nearly passing out as the being sent another surge of piercing pain toward her.

Her hands met the hilt of the sword, still lying within the case. At the sound of the being slamming into the glass window, Kagome grabbed the sheath, slipping the red sash across her chest, allowing the scabbard to hang on her back. As the creature outside the window continued its ineffective attempts to enter the room, Kagome gripped the weapon, praying she would be able to lift it.

Something inside of her whispered insistently. Whispered for her to take the sword. Needed her to keep it from the evil being outside. Kagome did not have time to question the voice or the natural instinct that told her she must keep the sword within her grasp.

Bracing her elbows on the edge of the glass box, she lifted, straining, raising the sword several inches before it fell back into the pillar.

"Come on, please!" she choked back the sobs that threatened to break loose, concentrating on the sword in her hands, the mist that rose around her face.

She could not lift it.

The glass box was too high and in her fear, her muscles were far too weak and uncoordinated.

Outside the creature had disappeared, leaving the room and Kagome's head to silence.

She hesitated, keeping her grip on the sword, staring at the window. And then there was a sudden blast of black light. Kagome dropped the sword and threw up her hands, protecting her face. When the blast ended, she peeked over her forearms and saw that the window was cracked, bleeding white and black light, mingled with rain. The creature screamed in triumph, pushing its claws into the crack, attempting to widen it.

Whirling around, looking for something to aide her, Kagome's gaze fell on the wooden training sword. Running to the stand, she lifted the glass top, fumbling in her hurry. Reaching within, she grasped the wood, and extracted it.

Behind her, the dark being had widened the glass's crack and the white light was slowly weakening. Running back to the sword's display case, she held the bokken in her hands and angled her body toward the case. Pulling back the makeshift weapon, she swung with all her might, closing her eyes as she did, the impact sending glass shards flying at her face and neck.

Opening her eyes, she reached for the sword, just as the window exploded, sending her flying backwards to land in a painful heap near the door. Through the haze of pain, she saw the dark being flow into the room. And when she gazed upon it she fought back the urge to scream.

* * *

Taisho crept through his halls, following the demonic entity as it paced outside his home, just beyond his perimeter. The man paused when he felt the girl brush her hand across the sword, sending a shiver through him. For a moment, as she touched the blade, he had felt a gentle caress, whispering across his being, feather light and altogether unearthly. It was almost as if she had run her fingers along the back of his neck or across the sensitive skin of his jaw line. He marveled at this new bond between man, girl, and sword, momentarily lost in the strange connection.

Outside, he felt the emergence of two demons. Rushing to the window, he looked out over his property. Below his window, standing in the rain, was the shadow of a tall slender woman, sneering up at him, her eyes burning with fury.

"Well, well, if it isn't the famed Taisho." Her voice was quiet. If he had not possessed extraordinary hearing, he would never have heard the hissing words that fell from her blood red lips. "How have you been Se-"

"If you dare address me with that name I will show you suffering to a degree you cannot imagine," he snarled, his voice rattling the window, nearly shattering the glass.

The woman laughed and continued to hold his gaze, flickering red meeting golden brown.

It was not until he felt the second demon, testing his barrier, a few precious feet away from the girl that he snapped out of his absorption. As he tore himself from the window, he ran, feeling the barrier shatter, Kagome's hands grasp the sword, and the long forgotten feeling, adrenaline, power through his veins, a warrior's soul returning to the shell of a formerly limitless being.

* * *

_Thanks for reading! _


	9. What Time is it?

_Here's chapter 9. You'll have to wait a few days (3 at most) for me to upload chapter 10. Thanks for reading and reviewing. It the hits to the story are any indication, my story is somewhat popular. Enjoy!_

* * *

**Chapter 9 **

**What Time is it?**

Kagome could not breathe. Every time she took in oxygen she felt as if her chest would explode. One of her ribs was broken. Groaning in pain and confusion, she looked up from her huddled position by the door. The dark, blurry mass that had broken Taisho's barrier of glass and magic flowed into the room. Biting her lip to keep her scream within, the girl reached for the sword and pulled it closer to her, dragging it across the floor, eyes never leaving the thing before her.

The wretch stood nearly seven feet tall, his very essence ebony, a sable cape, seemingly made of the night fluttering around massive shoulders. The edges were worn and tattered, of varying lengths and stages of deterioration. Black hair, as dark as midnight, like strings of satin hung and melded into the darkest depths of the cloak. It was not the darkness of his being that tore the breath from her body, but the face that was held within. Sallow and pale, bordering on opaque, he looked of death and decay. A single red eye rolled lazily, its companion socket empty, a hole that lead to nothing. He smiled, revealing white teeth, sharpened to points, perfect for ripping flesh.

_Protector, give me the sword and I will end your suffering before it begins. _

Kagome, in an incredible amount of pain, crawled backwards across the floor; unsure whether she would be able to stand if she tried. Every portion of her body was screaming at her. The part of her mind that always remained sarcastic, her coping mechanism, taunted her: should have kept that gym pass, then at least you'd be able to lift the sword.

"I am not giving you the sword and harming me isn't going to do a lot to butter me up. I suggest you try offering something that will give me incentive to hand it over. I've always wanted a pony. Do you have one of those? Because I think a pony is a pretty decent trade for an ancient weapon meant to save the world." She breathed raggedly under her words, fighting the urge to laugh at her absurdity.

Kagome inched herself over to the door, holding her ribs with one hand, the other still clasping the sword, straining to pull it up to her body.

_No trade. Give me the sword. _

Kagome moved the straining muscles of her right arm, silently pleading with the weapon, cursing her neglected gym membership, and hoping Taisho, damn him, would appear to save her despite her earlier announcement that she did not need to be rescued.

Please, please, she implored to the sword, please let me lift you.

The misty substance that had been rolling off the sword intensified, wrapping the girl within its grey confines. Answering her plea, the sword she had been fighting to keep her grip on, lightened. Survival instinct had taken hold and Kagome did not wonder how she had commanded the sword or why it had listened to her. At the present moment, she could not have cared less. Taking the hand that she had wrapped around her side, she placed it on the hilt and stood shakily.

The dark demonic creature had flowed into the room, standing a few feet away from her, a strange dark mist similar to the one around the sword building behind him. The dark cloak like apparel around his form lifted, its tattered edges reaching out, snaking toward her, intent on catching her. Kagome reached a hand behind her, fumbling, fingers clasping around the cold doorknob. As the weaving, dark tendrils shot toward her, she turned the doorknob and the door opened, carrying her backwards, away from the deathly reach and into the hallway.

Scrambling to her feet she darted down the corridor, carrying the sword with her, stumbling, feeling the wrath of her enemy at her heels. She felt something reach around her ankle and tighten painfully, wrenching her off her feet. She hit the ground, landing on the side that already screamed with pain. Kagome rolled, sitting up, bringing the sword down on the dark claw digging into her flesh. The sword sliced through and the creature screamed, drawing back. Using the sword to prop herself up, she fell against the wall, panting. She held the sword in front of her, knowing she could not run. Her lungs were barely functioning and she could hardly put weight on her bleeding ankle. The blade shook with her arms, her body in shock, her mind far away.

The creature, hunched over, cradling one of the extensions of its cloak, and then slowly looked up at her, its one eye blazing with red fire. Hissing like a wounded animal, the darkness behind it swelled, dozens of tattered cloak remnants charging toward her. Kagome swung the sword, trying to see all attacks at once. With a surge of power, the mists swarmed toward her, dodging her ill aimed sword swipes, wrapping neatly around her throat.

Cradled in darkness, she felt the world dim.

_Give me the sword. _

"Why don't you take it from me if you want it so badly?"

She heard a growl that made the air hum, the cracking of bones in her neck, and then felt the lovely sensation of floating.

* * *

Taisho vaulted over the staircase rail, landing on the ground, his knee lightly brushing the spotless wooden floor. He crouched, gathering his strength, and dashed forward, pools of white light gathering in his hands, seeping to his fingertips. As he rounded the corner that led to the last hallway he felt the emergence of an invisible barrier. Before he could halt his steps, he slammed, shoulder first, into the solid air. Snarling in fury, he raked glowing fingertips across the wall, neatly dissecting it in two.

He took a single step into the hallway and reacted like lighting as a flash of silver sliced through the air. Raising his forearm, he felt the rip of skin and tissue as the attack glanced off, the protective measure shielding his face and eyes. Lowering his arm, he looked up and sneered.

The woman standing before him smiled coyly, fluttering a pretty Japanese fan in front of her face. To her left side, the window she had broken through had exploded inward, showering the floor with sparkling glass and the dying light of Taisho's magical barrier.

"Ah, Taisho," she purred, the skin around her eyes wrinkling as she smiled behind the fan, "I am afraid you will have to deal with me before you rescue the girl."

The light at his fingertips extended, shafts of glowing white solidifying. He held his fingers up before his eyes, examining the claw-like appendages, a grim, knowing smile twisting his handsome lips. The woman cocked her head, lowering the fan, her blood red lips appearing, white teeth flashing within.

"Kagura, move."

"No, I don't think I will."

Taisho leapt forward, his graceful body moving easily, exerting little energy. The razor sharp shafts of light sliced through the air, creating a white line of blurred movement. Kagura danced away from his attacks, flipping her fan through the air as he slid past her, sending her strange energy at his back. The magical essence shifted, solidifying, much as the power in Taisho's hands had, morphing into thick silver blades carried by her makeshift wind. Taisho spun to the side, feeling the snag of the blades against his clothing.

Now, with the woman behind him, she was out of his immediate way, the hallway in front of him empty, devoid of any other enemies. Taisho, heedless of the adversary at his back, ran, intent on the girl and the sword.

Ahead of him, a door burst open, and Kagome tumbled out, clutching the sword to her chest. She was hardly down for a second before she was back on her feet, running, a dark essence flowing behind her. He worked his throat to call out to her, but found instead, the curious sensation of pain tearing through his left arm.

Taisho, as much as he hated to admit it, was rusty. After the demon had been sealed away he had lost much of his power. But for hundreds of years he had not needed all of his power to defeat enemies. His greatest enemy dead, Taisho had been confident he would not meet one of his equal until the same demon reappeared. He had trained and learned the way his newly weak body functioned. He knew that he was not frail by human standards, still immensely powerful when compared, but he had become overly confident in his security. After years without the brunt of his powers and without meeting enemies with exceptional skill and power, he was not surprised that he was floundering, rather gracelessly, during this battle.

At the height of his power he had been a warlord, dispensing death as easily as he breathed. But time marched on, and the world with it. No longer were there warlords and skirmishes, battles and lands to protect. Taisho also begrudged, as he felt himself shoved against the wall, he had allowed the world to change him, too. Without constant threats he had let his guard down and now, as a result, he was wounded, and the girl…

Taisho bared his teeth as Kagura slammed one of her blades into his left upper arm and shoulder. When his eyes opened, he did not look at the frighteningly enchanting face hovering inches from his own. His eyes went to the girl; twenty or so feet down the hall, completely oblivious of Taisho as she waged her own battle against the dark creature.

"Is this the arm, Taisho?" His attention was ripped from Kagome as Kagura shifted, plunging the blade in further. "Is this the arm you gave up for that bitch? The arm you gave when you sought revenge for her death? You know, I never will understand why you protect them," she nodded to Kagome, against a wall, breathing raggedly, " you were so powerful, you could have ruled the world. There is still time, you know. Take the sword from her! Kill her! No one will stand in your way."

Taisho chuckled darkly, his voice thick with controlled pain, "Fool."

He smiled down into the woman's face as the light in his hands brightened. Before she could withdraw her hand from the blade at his shoulder he thrust his fingers into her stomach, the razor-edged magic in his hands tearing over her abdomen. The woman stumbled back, clutching her abdomen, bleeding, falling to the floor.

"You dare presume you are stronger than me? That you can defeat me with this?" He ripped the blade out of his flesh and threw it to the floor.

Reaching down, he grabbed the front of the woman's clothes, and hoisting her up off her feet, brought her face to his, growling, " That I would dishonor my father's name and stoop your master's level? Go back to your owner and tell him I have the sword and the girl and he will not touch them." Turning to face one of the many windows in the hallway, he extended his free hand and waved it dismissively. The glass exploded outward and he threw the woman into the rain, the white blast of his power propelling her through the air, slamming her into a tree. The barrier he had opened immediately closed, enveloping the entire house, trapping them within and any other enemies without.

Taisho turned toward Kagome, only to see the dark spirit wrap its claws around her throat, lift her off the ground, and hold her against the wall. Sprinting forward he flicked his wrist, the five extensions on his fingertips lengthening into one brilliant line, trailing down to the floor.

He could hear Kagome's voice, guttural, and saw her eyes roll back, slipping into death.

* * *

Kagome was furious with him. He had wandered into her museum, ordered her around, told her the most fantastic story she had ever heard, informed her that she was some sort of key to saving the world, seemed pretty damn adamant about protecting her, and now, he was nowhere to be found.

Men!

And all this over a silly sword. Really, Kagome thought, rather absently, all she wanted was to have a decent job and live peacefully with her dog. That wasn't too much to ask, was it? Well, apparently it was, the rational part of her brain told her, because she was currently suffocating to death.

Damn that Taisho.

She struggled futilely and with the last amount of strength she possessed, she swung the blade. The grip on her neck loosened, but not enough to bring her the precious oxygen that she needed. And then, to her surprise and confusion, she heard a familiar voice.

"Miss Higurashi, give me the sword."

_Well, I'm not so sure …_

"Kagome, give me the sword."

She sighed, rather exasperated.

_Fine, it's yours anyway. _

She felt her hand extend, releasing her grip on the sword. And then all thought left her completely.

* * *

In her dream, Taisho held the sword in his hand, a noiseless wind swirling around his body. Hair, a moment before white-blonde, suddenly appeared a silvery white, falling into furious golden eyes. Eyes that gazed down at the sword in his hand almost lovingly. Eyes that raised themselves to the dark mist and man controlling them, to spill fire, to slash with metal, to destroy.

* * *

Kagome woke slowly, pain immediately making the contents of her stomach roll. Moaning, her eyes still closed, she attempted to roll over and crawl to her knees.

"No, do not move."

The voice sounded from above, floating downward, echoing as if it had come from far away.

"What time is it?" It even hurt to speak.

"Do you really care at a time like this?"

Cracking open a throbbing eye, she could barely make out white and gold swimming above her, "Have you never owned a high maintenance dog before?"

There was a shocked silence and then, rather snippily, Taisho asked, "You almost died and your first thought is of your dog and his confounded dinner schedule?"

"Of course. Besides, whose fault is it that I almost died? Yours or my dog's?"

She opened both eyes and nearly passed out again. As everything came back into focus she found herself, lying on her back, in the middle of Taisho's hallway. She was in pain, still wet from the rain, and somewhere in the back of her numb mind, extremely upset.

Taisho's face appeared above her. She opened her mouth to snap at him, ignoring the aching in and around her throat, but stilled her tongue as she saw bright red blood seeping from an open wound on his shoulder.

"What in the hell happened to you?"

He smirked and Kagome blinked. He looked different.

His hair, as it had been in her dream, was now a curious white-silver, capturing and reflecting the dull light around them. It was longer now, too. Before it had fallen to just above his shoulder, a tousled mess above his eyes. It was to his shoulders now and despite his disheveled appearance it looked quite attractive.

Kagome squinted at him, noting that there were strange, vague marks on his cheekbone. Before she could examine them further, he raised an eyebrow at her and sat back on his heels, looking around the remains of his hallway.

"Miss Higurashi, you act as if you have never seen me before in your life. Now, did your question pertain to my current health or to my rather belated rescue of you?"

Kagome, not really in the mood to argue, covered her eyes with a hand and mumbled, "Both."

She felt two hands gently lift her, sitting her upright.

"Ow, ow!" She swatted him away and immediately regretted the action. "My rib is broken and my neck is hurt! If you don't mind, I would like you to be gentle!"

"I thought I was."

She looked up at him and glared. He stepped away from her, letting her sit in her pain, adjusting. As she gave her body time to calm down, she watched him.

He paced back and forth, slowly, languidly, as if testing his legs. It was then that Kagome saw the sword in his hand.

"Oh!" She exclaimed.

He glanced over his bleeding shoulder and then looked to where her gaze was directed.

"You seem to have somehow given me permission to wield my blade."

Kagome inspected him carefully. He still looked like the Taisho she had met the day before, despite the few physical changes. It was more that the presence around him that had changed. He was absolutely brimming with power.

If she had not believed his story before, she did now. There was no room for argument in her mind, as she gazed at him, he was, without a doubt, a powerful being. The very air hummed with his authority, buzzing around him, waiting to be called into action. Every few seconds, Kagome thought she could see wisps of palpable air swirl around him. It was as if he had a constant but altogether natural mastery of the elements.

Not to mention he looked every inch a king or warlord.

His eyes, once brown and tinged with gold, had become entirely golden, tantalizing, and fascinating. She was certain she could gaze into those irises and never tire of the depth that lay within. His white dress shirt, though torn, rain and blood soaked, might as well have been made of the finest silk, he wore it so rakishly.

Mentally and physically Kagome shook herself. Now was not the time to idolize Taisho's unearthly good looks.

"Are you well enough to move to a more comfortable area of the house?"

He stooped down beside her and placed one of his large hands on her shoulder.

"Is it safe?"

He held the blade in front of her eyes, jiggling it slightly, as if to point out she had asked a silly question.

"_Fine_."

He reached to her back and removed the scabbard. Sliding the sword into its sheath he slipped the sash over his chest, freeing his hands. Carefully, and Kagome was grateful for his gentle touch, he gathered her into his arms, well aware that she was not of the mind or body to walk on her own. Mindful of her hurting ribs and various other injuries, he carried her away from the ruined hallway.

They made their way through the house, up a flight of stairs and into Taisho's master suite. Kagome raised an eyebrow at this but he did not seem to notice the discomfort this caused her. Once inside the room, he set her down on a large chair near the bathroom. Removing the sword and sheath from his back, he leaned them against the chair and disappeared into the bathroom. When he returned he handed a first aide kit to Kagome.

Opening it, she found the necessary bandages and medicines she needed to treat the cuts and scrapes that dotted her body. With the utmost care she removed the oversized jacket that Taisho had given her earlier that day and let it fall to the floor. Taisho remained standing, watching her carefully.

When she leaned down to examine her ankle she bit back a cry of pain.

"Right. Ribs. Broken."

Gasping for her air she leaned back into the chair and steadied her thoughts. While there were a million things she needed Taisho to answer for her, foremost in her mind was her well being. And of course, feeding Ajax.

"I think I need to go to the hospital," she murmured, touching her hand to her side, wincing.

Taisho shifted, hesitant.

"While I have not healed in centuries, I do have the ability. I could try if you would like."

She nodded her agreement, "So long as the side effects of you not having practiced healing aren't my death or the dismemberment of any appendage I might need."

"I highly doubt that would ever be the case."

"Then, please, have at it."

He came forward and knelt before her, extending one hand to her side and the other to her neck, where her skin had started to bruise from the attempted strangulation.

"I must admit, Miss Higurashi, I find your ability to take this entire situation in stride quite bemusing. After all, I had thought you did not believe my story."

"Well," she winced as he applied pressure to her side, "When one is chased by a floating death man who is intent on killing one, it tends to change most minds."

"Indeed."

"I also think that I might be in shock. I do not usually handle things this calmly. I _never_ handle things this calmly. I am sure, that if you give me time, I will either be hysterical or furious in the near future. Probably both. You need only wait." Her words stilled themselves on her tongue as a strange warmth filled her body, making her shiver, the pain immediately subsiding. "What an odd sensation. It feels like a warm bath after sledding in the snow for far too long."

Taisho removed his hands and stood again, "Does that mean you are free from pain?"

She took a deep breath and when she did not experience any pain, she nodded, "Yes, thank you."

"It is the least I can do after my late arrival and your generosity."

"I did give you your sword back, didn't I?"

He picked up the sword, pulling it from its sheath, "You did indeed."

"How did that happen? I thought you said it took years for you to wield the sword."

Taisho held the blade in front of his eyes, examining the perfect curvature of the edge, "It did take years. However, you are a different person entirely, and the circumstances surrounding this," he gestured, searching for the word, "this threat, are entirely different. I also think you have a different relationship with both the sword and I."

"What do you mean?" Kagome lifted her foot, examining the deep cuts, hissing as she applied medicine to it.

"We met under considerably friendlier circumstances. You had more reason to trust me than the previous Protector. The sword knows your mindset. It understands what you think and feel. The first time I went after the Protector I took her from her home and family. That is bound to breed contempt. Also, although I detest admitting this, I am a different man than I once was. One who better understands both humanity and the sword. The sword also responds differently to you than it has to anyone else. I had not previously been aware that one could control the heft of the weapon. But, when I took it from your grasp, it was lighter, light enough for you to carry. Upon returning to my hands it was immediately returned to its former weight. I believe you have a measure of control over it that its previous Protector did not. I can only assume this. If you really want to know you should ask the sword and hope that it will answer better than I."

Kagome, far past questioning his word, simply nodded and wrapped a bandage around her ankle.

"What happened? What were those demon things?"

Taisho strode away from her and with a graceful sweep, let the sword in his hand glide through the air, testing, remembering how he had once used the weapon.

"They were demons."

Kagome let out an exasperated breath and Taisho glanced at her. "Can you be more specific? I know you want some time to reacquaint yourself with your weapon but I would appreciate a further explanation."

"They were demons sent by the one I told you of. Lesser demons who serve a greater lord. I assume that, given my weakness, their mission was to either kill me or render me incapacitated," he gestured to the wound on his shoulder, "and bring the sword and or you to the demon. The demoness who stalled me, preventing me from coming to your aid sooner, has been a minion of the demon lord since his first arrival to power. I killed her once, but apparently, she has been resurrected."

"Great. Fantastic. Attempted kidnapping by demons." She exhaled and looked up at him. "And the demon who was so intent on choking the life out of me?"

Taisho paused in his graceful steps, his eyes meeting hers, a golden inferno blazing within. "He was a shell of the demon lord."

Kagome felt the air leave the room, "Sorry, shell?"

Taisho returned his eyes to the blade, running a thumb over the edge, smiling as the sharp metal drew a thin line of his blood from his finger. "Yes. The demon often sends vessels that carry his essence but are not his true form. It is meant to both trick and intimidate."

Kagome could think of nothing else to say besides, "Oh."

Drawing her knees up to her chest, she hugged them close, trying to impart warmth over her body. Taisho, after examining his sword for a few more moments, noticed her shivering. Walking over to his dresser he pulled out a pair of slacks and a shirt.

He tossed them at her, "Put those on."

Kagome eyed the garments with a measure of disapproval, "Taisho, I think these might be a bit big for me."

A belt fell at her feet and she bit back the urge to lob it back at him. She was still angry that she had nearly died, and rightly so. Picking up the clothes she padded into the bathroom and closed the door. Stripping off her rain soaked clothes she pulled on his pants and snorted at their size. With trembling hands she threaded the belt through the loops, wondering how much longer it would take for all that had happened to truly sink in.

"Does this demon have a name?" she called, lifting her voice so he could hear her through the door. Buttoning the shirt she pushed open the door and reentered the room.

Taisho was running his hand over the injury on his shoulder, "Yes. His name was Onigumo. I do not know if that is his name anymore. That was what he chose to call himself when first we met."

Kagome rolled up the pant legs of the slacks and sighed, "So, what do we do now?" When he didn't answer she looked up to see his face awash with an incredulous look. "What?"

"We?"

"Well, you told me the fate of the world rests on my shoulders. But now that I have given you the sword I want to know what is going to happen so that I can get on with my life. I need to find a job and if I am going to have demons jumping out at me every time I set foot outside my door, I might want to look into forging a blade of my own."

Taisho regarded her for a moment and then lifted the sword, a strange light filling the room.

"Let us see what the sword has in mind."

Before Kagome could ask him why he didn't just tell her, the light had intensified, nearly blinding her. The question forgotten, she closed her eyes against the searing white light and waited.

* * *

Taisho had not expected this. Never had he thought the sword would accept him so readily. While he presumed it had everything to do with the girl, he could not be certain. Now that his weapon was back in the proper hands, he knew he could handle what was to come. He would not need to run, to drag an unwilling young woman across the world. Perhaps, now that his enemies knew he was in possession of the sword, she could live a seemingly normal life, and forget these two strange and turbulent days.

Taisho raised the sword with his uninjured arm, feeling the power within and throughout his body, now directly tied to the weapon. He could hear the part of his magical entity that housed the greatest part of his strength, the part that made him dangerous, powerful, and otherworldly.

_What of the girl? Can she be released? _

The magic that both the sword and the master shared paused, thinking, considering the question. The element of the sword that was its own being began to distance itself from the master, hiding its thoughts and intentions.

_Tell me._

He commanded the sword, pressing his authority, reminding the blade who he was.

_Tell me of the girl. She does not want to be part of this. _

Distant flashes and images fluttered through his mind, disconnected and hazy. He could not make out any clear pictures, could not understand what the sword was showing him. But he could catch the feelings, the emotion, so oddly human for an object created from metal and fire. He could feel the absolute uncertainty of his own mind. The knowledge that even though the blade was once again in his hands, he still had to master it, to rein in its power. He was a wild thing, untamed and brimming with his long lost power. It would not come to his aide when he called it; it remained elusive, hidden, still just out of his reach. Angry that he had gotten so far only to be stalled again, he called out to the sword, reminding it of who he was, willing it to bend to its creator. And then, with a sudden jolt, it was clear. Taisho snarled, furious.

He had not expected the power of the sword to fight him. Not like this.

_She has served her purpose._

In response, the sword flared, equally angry.

It had made its decision.

Taisho lowered the blade and opened his eyes. Kagome sat, staring at him expectantly, a hopeful expression lighting her face.

The man grimaced and sheathed the blade with a rigorous thrust.

"The sword tells me you are further needed. And," he spat, loathing his absolute inability to control the events unfolding before him, "We must leave tomorrow."

* * *

_ Hope you enjoyed it. Give me a few days to upload the next chapter. Thanks for reading!  
_


	10. Bane of his Existence

_Here is chapter 10. I don't think I will have time to update before the week is through. I am hoping to have the next chapter written sometime in the next 6-7 days, but, don't hold me to that. Hopefully, I will be able to update once a week from now on. I promise to keep the updating as regular as I can. Again, all the reads and reviews are appreciated. I hope you are enjoying the story._

* * *

**Chapter 10**

**Bane of His Existence**

Kagome laughed. She couldn't help herself. The whole situation was beginning to grow old. She had just lived through the two most confusing days of her life and the man who had started it all was telling her she was further needed. Further needed … to save the world.

Right.

"Taisho," she snorted, although the glint in her eye was not lost on the man before her, "When I said, 'What do we do?', your response was supposed to be, 'We? There is no we. _I_. _I _will go hunt the demon and leave you in peace.' I was not really asking. I did my thing. Whatever that was. You have your sword and I assume, given your strange new appearance, your power. You don't need me."

Taisho had re-sheathed the sword and was watching her closely.

"Unfortunately, that is not the case."

"Unfortunately? _Unfortunately_!? Look, I'm not going anywhere. I was never asked to do this. But I gave you your sword anyway. I don't know how I did that, but I did. Go kill the demon and while you're at it, tell him I say hi."

She stood from the chair and stomped out of his room. She was not going anywhere with him. She was not going on some epic quest. She did not, _did not_, want to start out her Wednesday with anything having to do with demons, swords, or men named Taisho. Trudging down the darkened halls of his estate she tried to remember how to get down to the ground floor.

Behind her, she heard Taisho leave his room, following her at a distance.

"Miss Higurashi, I am afraid I still need your help just as you need mine."

She turned a corner and found the stairs, and gingerly, so as not to harm her ankle, she started down the steps.

"I don't need your help Taisho. Wait, never mind, you are right, I do. I need your help locating a ride back to the museum so I can pick up my car, drive home, feed my dog, eat my TV dinner, and fall back into my normal, boring, demon free, sword free, and Taisho free life. Besides a ride, I don't need a damn thing from you."

He appeared behind her and followed her down the stairs, keeping his distance.

"They know you are the Protector."

"How could they possibly know that?" She conveniently forgot that the demon that had attacked her had addressed her by 'Protector'. She did not want to admit he was correct. That would mean she did, in fact, need him. That others knew of her fate. Of who she was supposed to be. That there were evil forces who would come after her and attempt worse things than strangulation. "If you needed a dream to find out who I was, a dream from your very own sword, how could anyone else know who I am?"

She reached the bottom step and continued on her path to the front door, wherever that was.

"I do not presume to know how dark magic operates."

She glared at him over her shoulder, "Is that another way for you to say you have no idea and therefore you cannot offer me any advice as to how to avoid said demons? Or is that a lie? A way to goad me into doing what you want?" He simply watched her as she walked around the staircase, his golden eyes struggling to contain their anger. "Look, I believe your story now. But that doesn't mean I have to be a part of it!"

She paused, her eyes darting between two dark hallways. Choosing the one on her left she walked into the gloom, well aware that the man was still following her.

"As I said before you need me. You cannot argue that you do not need someone to watch out for you given-"

Kagome stopped short and turned around to face him.

"I do not need anyone to watch out for me. I have been watching out for myself for four years. How dare you presume I would even want you to look after me? After all you've put me through in the past two days you are lucky I am still speaking to you." She started walking backwards, meeting his gaze, but fury was demanding she leave the house at once. She was exhausted and emotionally drained. If she had to spend another moment with this man she thought she might scream. Turning back around she sprinted, careless of her ankle and other still healing injuries.

She needed to get out.

Deep inside, she felt the sudden snap, the warning before she broke into tears. The pent up emotion and detached feeling evaporated, the enormity of the situation falling onto her like a ton of bricks. Her breath came short; it was hard to see straight under all that was happening in her head. The tears welled up in her eyes, stinging, begging to be let loose over her eyelids.

No, she willed herself. Do not cry. Do not. You are much stronger than this.

Kagome, in her bare feet, slipped on the long pants, sliding into the entranceway and toward the door. Stumbling into it, she wrapped her hands around the doorknob and wrenched the door open, only to have it immediately slam shut in her face. A hand above her head and one at her left side told her that Taisho had caught up with her. She leaned her head against the door and closed her eyes, breathing deeply through her nose.

Behind her, she could feel Taisho breathing as well, but he was calm, inhaling and exhaling evenly, as if he had not just dashed down the length of the hallway, as if she had not just run away from him, as if all of her words had never been said.

"Miss Higurashi."

Kagome turned slowly, dejectedly, and looked up at him, leaning back against the door. He was not angry, as she thought he would have been. Instead, his face held something that, had she not known better, had she not thought him incapable of such an emotion, she would have assumed to be empathy.

"Even if I no longer needed you to wield the sword, that would not deter my enemies from coming after you. You will be the key to the sword until I kill them. In their desire to claim the weapon they would come after you in the hopes of somehow wrenching the sword from my grasp and then using you to wield the weapon for themselves. You do not deserve to know the depths of their depravity nor do you deserve to be subject to them. While my motives for keeping you with me may seem selfish, believe me when I say it is for your benefit that you stay with me. You are very brave, to have handled all of this so far." He paused, his eyes searching hers, his emotionless face partially hidden in shadow.

"I know that look in your eyes. It was evident to me the moment I met you. Whether you were destined to help me in my quest or become something in your own right, you were meant for greater things. You told me this yourself. If I were to ask you, if you could do anything you wanted, anything in the world, what would you do?"

Kagome, at a loss for words and air, uncomfortable but feeling strangely safe between his arms, looked at the floor, quietly thinking.

"I'd have adventures."

Taisho ducked his head, attempting to see her face, "And what is it that I am offering you, you wonder. This is another opportunity, Miss Higurashi, for you to do what you want. If you had stayed at Worthington Museum, do you think you would be happy?" She shook her bowed head, still lost in her thoughts. "I thought not. If you come with me, you will see things you never imagined, I can promise you that. It may not be what you had in mind, but it is a once in a lifetime chance."

"Taisho, I never fancied you a salesman." She looked up then, the humor returning to her voice, crawling into her eyes.

Taisho narrowed his own eyes, knowing she was not convinced, not entirely, and continued to speak, "I can also see your character, Miss Higurashi. It was very obvious from the moment that I met you. You are concerned with the world around you and despite your better judgment, despite what everyone says and does; you believe the possibilities of good are endless. That is why you agreed to see the sword, because you cannot say no to a cause that will help the greater good."

She shook her head, "Greater good? Taisho, you keep talking about this as if I am the only way to save the world."

"You may be."

They watched each other warily, trying to gauge the other's thoughts. Finally, Taisho, unable to wait any longer, threw in his bargaining chip, "I will pay you. Think of it as research. Hopefully, I will not need your assistance for long and you can, until this is all over, remain somewhere where you can live your life and still be protected." He paused, seeing the worry in her eyes, lining her face, "I know you did not ask for this, but now is when you can make your decision. I assure you that I will so whatever is necessary to convince you."

She snorted, "Right. It may take a lot, too. Offering me a job whose details include saving the world? Also, with the potential of death? Especially when the job I had this afternoon was perfectly adequate. A job, I might add, that had nothing to do with death and demons. A job you so generously helped me quit from. Yes, I would have to agree with you, doing 'whatever' to convince me might be the only way you will get me to agree to this."

Taisho, despite the severity of the situation before him, smiled, and Kagome was again struck by the physical changes in him. She was, in all honesty, surprised she could still keep her wits about her with his presence so close, his absolute insistence. The man tipped his head to the side, his brows drawing together.

"What?" She wondered out loud at his curious look until the hand above her head moved to her face, turning it slightly. His long fingers brushed the scratch marks along her cheekbone. She felt the intriguing warmth again, and when he drew his hand away, she replaced it with her own; the clotting blood had disappeared into pink skin, healing, and smooth, leaving only faint traces of the marks.

"He will not touch you again. As I said, you are the Protector of the sword and in turn, I am your Protector."

Kagome, usually the one thinking the romantic thoughts and notions, could not help but marvel at the absolutely selfishly selfless man before her. If he had once thought she was an enigma, she wondered how he characterized himself. There, underneath all of his superiority and authority, was a nobility that she had never expected a solitary person to possess. For the first time since she had met him, she truly understood why he had acted the way he did.

He really was trying to save the world.

And for that, he deserved more than her respect. He deserved her willing cooperation. The story he had told her _was_ real. He had traveled for years to kill a single entity, to rid the world of its most nefarious enemy. He had lost much in the process, but here he was, stooping, as Kagome was sure he thought it, trying to convince a stubborn girl that he needed her help. And despite his haughty, disdainful, and generally patronizing demeanor, one that constantly made her want to put him in his place, he was, as far as she could tell, a good man.

Everything he had said to her, making a decision, choosing to aid, assisting the greater good, applied to him as well. Kagome groaned inwardly, knowing that she had made up her mind already. She had known on the boardwalk, when he told he told her she was the key. She the key and he the one to turn the lock. He the one who would destruct and build and save and kill. She had known then that to turn away would be selfish. To say anything other than 'yes', would not only go against everything she had been brought up to believe, but it would, or could, potentially end the world in the process.

She sighed, dropping her head and her shoulders, feeling beaten. It wasn't so much choice as it was a necessity. Taisho waited, seemingly patient, but Kagome knew he was holding his breath, waiting to see if he needed to bet his other hand. With her head bowed she finally found her ability to speak, her voice coming out a hoarse whisper, "I will go with you."

There was a stupefied silence. She half expected something grand to happen, something that would signify the beginning of this newest escapade in her life. But there was nothing but the man and the girl, suddenly completely dependent on one another.

"You are certain?" His voice was full of uncontrolled disbelief.

Kagome raised her head and met his eyes, " I believed it. Your story. I believed it this morning. I believed it last night. I didn't want to admit it, but, as I stood in my kitchen, nearly going insane with all that you had told me, I knew you weren't lying. You were real. The whole story was real. I denied it and convinced myself that I was too rational to ever accept such a story. But," she shrugged and raised an eyebrow, "I have always had a tendency to take the road less traveled. So, while I don't think I am crazy and I am willing to help you, just keep in mind that this isn't something I do everyday. But, yes, I am certain." Taisho drew back from her, his face shadowed, but she could feel the relief of both the man and the sword, still distantly connected to her mind.

"There is however, one more thing I wish to discuss with you." He waited before her, silent. She sauntered up to him, standing on the tips of her toes, trying to bring herself up to his height, which, given her stature, was impossible, "Don't you ever, _ever_, let me get that close to death ever again. If you say you can protect me then do it. But if you cannot, let me know now. I don't want to trust you again only to die some untimely death because of my stupid naiveté."

Taisho, unable to move, to break from the gaze she held him in, simply nodded. In the two days he had known her, he had thought he had seen every range of her emotions. But the look in her eyes now could have melted a glacier or fired the forges of a hundred blacksmiths.

She held his gaze for a moment longer and then turned and walked to the door and pulled it open. Taisho cast her a questioning look.

"My dog still comes first. The world can wait twenty minutes while I feed him. Where did all your staff go? Get that limo back here, I have a mutt to take care of."

And with that, she slipped out of the front door, leaving it wide open; a self-assured sign that she knew Taisho would follow. The man bit back the angry retort he that bubbled on his lips and stepped out into the rain, trying, desperately, to keep his smile from breaking through his furious mask.

* * *

Once Taisho had located his staff, all of whom had fled the premises upon the appearance of the two demons, the man and girl found themselves, once again, in Taisho's limo. Upon Kagome's question at how the staff knew to flee Taisho explained that he only hired the most trusted of people. All of those under his employ knew of his identity and were trustworthy and capable of handling his rather monumental and mysterious life. 

"I had special barriers placed by myself and others, around the house. The staff knows that if someone who has not been previously announced or expected, is on the grounds they are in danger."

Kagome, although she was still furious with him, thought this very impressive and was in the process of asking him more detailed questions when she saw him touch the wound on his shoulder. Taisho gave away no sign that he was in pain, and the girl wondered why he did not heal himself.

"I cannot," he replied, applying pressure to the spot, channeling his energy to his left arm, willing the infection and poison to slow.

"Why not? You healed me easily enough."

Taisho nodded, "Yes, that was different. Do you recall when I said, during my story of the sword's history, that the war-" he stopped, voice momentarily lost in the past, "That I had lost my arm in the fight against the demon?"

"Yes."

"This is the arm that I lost. And the appendage that you see is not mine. I had to seek out very powerful priests and priestesses who could give me back the use of an arm. They constructed this out of a magic that I do not wield or even know the barest minimum of in order to explain to you. It was a draining process, receiving a new arm that was foreign to my body. Much of my remaining strength and power has been channeled into maintaining this arm as part of my being. After a time it became second nature, but it is exhausting nonetheless. Now that it is injured, I do not possess the skills necessary to heal it. I must go to those who can do what I cannot."

"And where might that be? You haven't told me where we will be going yet."

Taisho looked down at the sword that lay over his legs, the sword that would, for as long as he deemed necessary, always be within his grasp. When he looked back at Kagome he saw she was growing impatient.

"Japan."

The emotions that she displayed were varied. Among the ones that he could distinguish, were excitement and, curiously, distress. Before he could ask her why she seemed to be so apprehensive, she spoke; interrupting the important thought flow of his mind.

"I haven't been there in awhile."

Taisho shifted, trying to get a better view of her face, "You do not wish to go?"

She hunched forward and placed her chin in her hands, balancing her elbows on her knees, "Did I say that? No. But, going back there will be a little bittersweet. But, look, here we are. I don't really want you to come in with me, I-"

Taisho was already out of the limo, too impatient for the driver to open the door for him. He stood in front of the limo door, searching the apartment complex before him. His eyes swept over the area, sliding over the parking lot, up the sides of the buildings, checking the street. Kagome, from inside the limo, watched, fascinated, as a fuzzy white light appeared around him. It was hazy, as if it should have been invisible. Realizing that the light misty rain was revealing the opaque power around him, she wondered if this shield always enclosed the man. She didn't doubt that in some way or another, he always kept his defenses up.

After his cursory examination of the area he held out his hand to Kagome. Feeling a bit perturbed she took the offered hand and was pulled out into the rain.

"I know that you do not like the idea of being protected. I admire your independence-"

Kagome pulled from his grasp and hurried up the steps and into the building. "Taisho, before you dissect my self-reliant and infuriating nature let me feed my dog. Then we can discuss exactly how this whole protecting thing is going to pan out. Just because I said I would go with you does not mean you are my keeper and overprotective jailer."

Taisho, in the few moments following Kagome's decision to help him, had almost forgotten about her mouth. And her defiance. But since she had confronted him about his less than stellar rescue of her, she had been quietly fuming. He had made yet another mistake. He had underestimated her again. Upon her answer, upon agreeing to go with him, he had fallen into his age-old superior mindset and dominant disposition. If Taisho had been a man to admit flaws, he would have readily confessed his inability to comprehend the independence and generally truculent behavior she seemed to master so well. The creature before him was continually testing both his patience and his authority and he was beginning to find it hard to hold his own tongue.

Looking down at the sword in his hand, he frowned. They were rather alike, the weapon and the girl. Sent to torment him.

Taisho, lost in his own thoughts, trailed after the girl, keeping his mouth firmly shut, opting to keep his curt words to himself. There was no telling what might happen if he spoke out of turn. After the day she had had he was surprised she had not asked him to take her to the nearest padded cell. That would have been after she had taken his sword and run it through his head. He was glad, but only barely, that she was so wrapped up in her dog's welfare, for if she hadn't had something to distract her, Taisho was reasonably certain she would have attempted to kill him.

Kagome jogged up the last few steps to her floor, limping slightly at the top. She had forgotten about her injury. As she stopped at her door, she stood on the tips of her toes and slid her fingers along the top of the doorframe. A key fell from the frame and Taisho reached out, catching it in the palm of his large hand. He held it up to his face and then looked at the girl.

"I left my keys in my purse, my purse in my car, and my car at the museum. I keep an extra above the door when the billionaires come to tell me they need me to save the world." She inserted the key into the lock and was then rudely brushed aside by Taisho. "What-"

He ignored her completely and stepped within the apartment, making a quick sweep with his senses. Inside, he breathed a sigh of relief. If all went well, they would be able to make it out of the country and to his homeland with little to no difficulty. The sword in his hand hummed, it ached, it wanted to set the wheels in motion. It was ready to begin the hunt for the demon. Taisho sighed. However, before he did that, there were more than a few things to be taken care of.

Kagome pushed past Taisho none too politely. Upon her entrance into the apartment, Taisho heard the prance of feet, echoing in the kitchen. Kagome's spoiled mutt ran to greet her, ignoring the tall man who hovered behind her. The girl squealed happily and dropped to her knees, hugging the animal to her chest, scratching her fingers through its fur. Kagome, without another word to Taisho, went off to the kitchen to feed the dog. After she had done so, she returned to find the man peering at the picture frames on her wall.

"Snooping?"

He did not take his eyes off of the pictures. Instead, he leaned closer to get a better look. "Snooping would require me to sift through things that were not placed in plain sight."

"It is possible to snoop without sifting. I would think you to be adept at such things. Perhaps snooping is the wrong word. You find out pieces of information and then use them to your advantage. You are right, it is not snooping, it something else entirely."

So, even after seeing her damn dog she was still angry with him.

He pulled his attention away from the photos, his questions once again thwarted. "Miss Higurahsi, do you wish to lambaste me or inquire about the journey we have ahead of us?"

She folded her arms over her chest, her eyes sparking. It was actually quite amusing, the way she stood before him, furious, diminutive, swimming in his clothes. Noting his smirk she became irritated.

"What?"

He shook his head, immediately losing the smile, "Nothing. Should we discuss the immediate future?"

Kagome rubbed the back of her neck, "Haven't we discussed things to the point of ridiculousness?" Seeing his disapproving glance she gave in. "Yes."

"We will leave tomorrow, early morning, and take my private jet to Japan. I have the business of my arm to take care of. And," He gestured to the sword, "the sword has something it wishes us to do."

"Who is the master here, you or that sword?"

Taisho would have beheaded a lesser man… or woman… for her words. It took every ounce of his control to not draw the sword and slice her pretty head from her shoulders. Maybe, if he had, he thought, clenching his teeth, he would finally have his peace.

"I will ignore your comment in light of your absolute ignorance." Kagome tossed him a look that plainly showed she couldn't care less what he wanted to do to her.

"All that sounds great but I don't know what to do with Ajax. How long are we going to be gone? I can't leave him alone for weeks on end. A week tops. I don't even know who to call to come watch him on such short notice."

Taisho hoisted the sword over his uninjured shoulder, his eyes trailing around the room, bored. "One of the benefits of being a very rich man is that I know plenty of people who can take care of such minor inconveniences."

"Ajax is not an inconvenience."

"Not for you."

Kagome dropped onto her couch. He could see her working the muscles in her jaw. She was biting her tongue. "I don't care what kind of pet nanny or doggy spa you know of. I don't want to leave him for extended periods of time. How long are we going to be gone?"

Taisho scornfully examined the bloodstain on his white shirt, plucking it at and peeling it away from the tender wound.

"Indefinitely."

Kagome jumped off the couch in her surprise and anger. "Indefinitely? When were you planning on informing me of this? When we were on the plane? What I am going to do with my dog? I am not leaving him here or giving him away!"

"I told you, I have plenty of people to take care of him."

"I don't doubt that you do, but I don't know your people and he is my only family. Maybe you don't understand why I need him but you can at least accept that he is an invaluable part of my life and that no where in this whole saving the world scheme did you ever mention that I would have to leave my dog for time unknown!"

Kagome was now in front of Taisho, glaring up at him, her hands shaking from furry, her face red.

"I thought that saving the world would come before your damn dog."

"Well, you were wrong." She turned and walked off into a hallway, slamming the door to what Taisho presumed to be her bedroom, shut.

The man tipped his head back and closed his eyes. The sword in his hand began to glow, heating to his touch. That was a familiar feeling that nearly sent him reeling. The fiery burning sensation that crawled across his skin was a precursor, a warning. It was the feeling he had experienced once, long ago, before he could touch the sword. Before the first Protector had given him the blade. For the first time in his long life, Taisho felt an emotion close to panic. His mind raced.

Her emotions could be felt by the sword. No, it was worse than that.

She could still control the sword.

She had given him permission to wield the blade, but she could take it away as quickly as she had given it. This knowledge was necessary to him and vital to his enemies. If she was to be taken, she could be coerced, forced, tortured, into reclaiming the sword. Reclaiming it for his enemies.

This was also a predicament for Taisho. He would have to keep her appeased. He would have to continue or attempt to continue the exhausting task of charming her. But, now that she had seen past his good looks and false appeal, he was not sure it would work. She had seen the man he really was and that man made her furious.

A small disturbance at his feet made him look down.

The dog had returned and was now sitting, much to Taisho's indignation, on his feet. If he had not been so sure the girl would take his sword and run it through his belly, Taisho would have skewered the thing where it sat.

"Ah, the bane of my existence."

The dog simply cocked its head at him before it started sniffing the legs of Taisho's trousers.

Muttering obscenities he shooed the dog away and went to find the girl. He knew what he had to do. And he was not pleased to think that the silly creature behind him would soon be living in his mansion.

* * *

_Again, expect an update no sooner than a week (if it gets up before then it will be nothing short of a miracle). But I promise that as long as I do not have writers block or ridiculous professors who give me a ton of work, I will update often(one to two (if lucky) times a week?). _

_Reviews and Reviewers are appreciated. Hope you liked it._


	11. Stony Steps

_Here's chapter 11. Hope you enjoy it. As always, thanks for the reviews and the reads!_

* * *

**Chapter 11**

**Stony Steps**

Kagome dropped her bag when she stepped into the room. It was absolutely breathtaking. After all the trouble she had been to Taisho, she was surprised he had not given her a cot in a cellar or a broom closet. He had far outdone himself. But, then, she thought as she stepped, open mouthed, into the bedroom, every room in his mansion must be like this. He was a man who expected nothing but the exceptional.

A huge picture window was letting in the soft afternoon light and she squinted her eyes as she skipped over to the window. Leaning on the glass, she sucked in her breath. Even the view was spectacular. The room looked out over a beautifully constructed koi pond and garden. She could see the lush greens and vibrant colors of plants and flowers that she could not name, sweeping across the huge expanse of land around his house. Hidden in the reeds and bushes, peeking out from behind the abundant vegetation were stone steps, twisting and leading up into the hills of his property. Waterfalls fell from moss-covered rocks, enclosed behind bamboo terraces. For a few moments, as Kagome stared in wonder, her long journey was forgotten.

But what a journey it had been.

It had taken Taisho an extra hour and a half to make up for his blatant disregard of Ajax. He had gone so far as to not only quadruple her museum pay but also promise to have the dog flown out to his mansion by the end of the week. Ajax was currently enjoying himself at the most expensive and luxurious doggy spa that Taisho could find. And then there had been the moment when the hysterics kicked in. Taisho, who refused to leave Kagome alone, lest she be attacked or hurt by some malevolent being, had spent the night on her couch, while she quietly sobbed into her bed, praying she had made the right decision, praying she was not insane. Following her sleepless night there had been a rush to the airport where the man and the girl had boarded Taisho's private jet, chartered for Japan.

For the duration of the flight, which was many more hours than Kagome cared to spend with the surly, globetrotting, sword collecting, otherworldly being, they had not spoken a single word to one another. Kagome, although willing to help him to the best of her abilities, could only handle so much of his behavior. And she still had not forgiven him for failing to come to her aide sooner. Taisho, finding her silence perfectly adequate, had kept himself out of her way, at the front of the plane, perfectly content not to be ensnared in another argument.

Then there had been the prolonged drive to his home, also completed in silence. If Kagome hadn't been so intent on keeping her mouth shut, she would have inquired as to why they were driving not only in circles, but also in squares. She did not know whether his desire to keep the location of his home hidden was meant for her safety or for his, but it was apparent that he did not want her to know the route or routes they had taken to arrive at the splendid manor.

Kagome, who was blessed with a decent inner compass, could not really have told him where they were, but she was intelligent enough to notice that they passed the same area of road four times. She could not help but think that was some sort of underestimation of her on Taisho's part, and it made the girl all the more furious.

But, as she leaned against the glass, breathing out, fogging up a small portion of the window, she was far too tired to try and further dissect the motives, character, and intentions of the elusive Taisho. At least she found it easier to meet his eyes without feeling as if she would spontaneously combust. Her knees still went a little, well, she admitted, a lot weak when he looked toward her, or smirked at her, or happened to be in the immediate area around her. But, she tried to cheer herself up, her temper had returned, which was a sure sign that she could handle his superiority, his oddly infuriating charm, and yes, even his astounding looks. That the speechlessness and stuttering had finally left her was a good indication she would be able to face him without being duped into doing what he wanted. Although, admittedly, she was currently in Japan because he wanted her to be.

Damn it.

Kagome turned from the window and the exquisite gardens before her and threw herself onto the king size bed, wishing she were on vacation and not waiting around to help Taisho save all of humanity. She lay there, thinking, staring up at the ceiling, reminiscing.

It had been awhile since she had even thought about Japan. She tried not to think about it, anyway. It wasn't that she didn't love the people, the culture, and the country; it was more that her older memories, the difficult ones, those images that gave her nightmares, would always be linked to this wonderful and enchanting place, tarnishing her view of it. Rolling over onto her stomach, she recalled her mother's love for the land.

Somewhere, way back in their family history, on her mother's side, there was Japanese blood. She supposed that meant she had lied when she told Taisho she was not Japanese. But, it was so far back in her family, she hardly thought it worth mentioning.

Her mother had always loved East Asia. Kagome, always the stubborn one, had resisted her mother's gentle insistence that she learn about the Asia. As Kagome had grown older, she had become more and more interested in her mother's first love. But it was only after her return to the states that she truly appreciated her time in Japan.

Kagome, not wishing to dwell on such thoughts, slipped off the huge bed and found her way out the bedroom door. She meandered down the long halls of Taisho's mansion, passing many of his staff, all of whom bowed to her. The girl, after living in the states for three years, was westernized to a degree that would put her learned eastern culture to shame, and found she was momentarily surprised by their gestures.

And then she began to worry about a whole slew of cultural barriers. Not to mention the language barrier. Her Japanese had always been sub par, practically nonexistent. If there was one thing Kagome could willingly admit defeat in, it was the learning of languages. She smiled pleasantly at the staff as she passed, only catching a few words here and there that she could possibly, if she was lucky, understand.

She eventually found her way into the garden. It was not a difficult task in itself. The ornate foliage wrapped around the entirety of the property. She sighed with content; it was a beautiful late afternoon. The sun was only just beginning to set, the soft light dancing through the gently blowing leaves of the trees. Kagome picked her way through the hidden steps and stones, crossing the pond, careful not to loose her balance and fall in. The fish darted around the raised stones, waiting to see if she was going to feed them. Their scales reflected the light, dancing over her eyes, bringing a smile to her face. Back home, not far from her apartment, there had been a Japanese garden, one she liked to visit when she needed time to think. But it did not compare to this. If she ever spoke to Taisho again, she would have to tell him how much she enjoyed his home.

She stood for a moment, watching the fish swim, before stooping to place her hand in the water, loving the way her head was devoid of all strange thoughts and foreign emotions. The combination of shock, jet lag, and general hysteria had propelled Kagome into a confused and dazed state and she had spent her first hours in Japan staring at the landscapes, thinking deep but altogether hazy thoughts. She still had hundreds of questions that needed answering, but her silent treatment of Taisho and her slowly returning senses kept her from asking. The past few days were simply a whirl of unbelievable events. Had she not felt the cool water of the pond on her fingertips, the nibbling of the fish at her hands, she would have thought it all a dream.

Standing, the girl spotted a pathway leading up a small incline, ancient stones placed as steps, disappearing into the trees. She made her way up the steps, her eyes scanning the forest, wondering where the path led. The steps were wide, as if they had been measured for a person with a much longer stride. As she approached the top of the winding steps she began to find the distance between each stair difficult to manage without tripping. Cresting the hill, she stepped foot on the last stone, and stopped short.

Before her, lay a flat area surrounded by trees. A large red arbor of sorts had been constructed where the land flattened. It was wide and round, an area suitable for training, which, Kagome noted, was what Taisho was currently doing. She stood, hovering quietly for a few moments, surprised that she had stumbled upon him. Surprised, until she remembered the familiar hum of the sword, calling out to her, as she stood frozen before the master of the blade.

He was in the midst of an imaginary battle, his sword in his hands, cutting, swiping, and lunging at his invisible adversary. He wore traditional Japanese garb, made of the finest white silk she had ever seen. The garments hung loosely, flowing around his tall, lithe form, moving with his body and the wind, whispering with and against the breeze in the trees. His silvery hair had been pulled back out of his face, a jumbled mess at the back of his head. Kagome, feeling as if she had just intruded on a private moment, began to back away, not wishing to disturb him.

"You need not sneak away, Miss Higurashi."

She froze. His back was still to her. Apparently, this was another aspect of his power that she would need to become accustomed to. He turned and faced her, gracefully sheathing the sword.

"Er- Hello." She stood, lingering in the edge of the step, feeling awkward.

The man, while still stony faced, seemed to relax slightly as she spoke.

"So, you have decided to speak to me again."

She shrugged, "For now."

He beckoned her forward and she came, albeit slowly. When she stepped within the training area she felt the rush of power around her body, constricting, warning her, and her eyes immediately went to his face.

He looked off into the distance, as if staring at the trees, and then the pressure that had been surrounding her lifted, and breathing became easy again.

"Apologies. I often find that I protect myself unconsciously. I did not mean to threaten you."

Kagome tugged on one of her earlobes, twirling the earring therein with her fingertips, "It's alright. I have no comprehension as to how you rein in your power, but if it is anything like I imagine, you must always struggle to contain it."

She said this offhandedly, not really wanting to offer her speech as a way of an apology for her earlier behavior, but after so long, she was finding it difficult to remain silent.

Taisho scrutinized her for a moment, "Is that your way of apologizing for your childish behavior?"

Kagome did not even bother to respond. Instead, she turned on her heel and started back toward the steps, only to walk right into his chest, her nose connecting painfully. She stumbled back, her hand flying to her nose, rubbing it in an attempt to soothe the pain.

She looked up at him over her hand, "Was that entirely necessary? I can tell you that using your abilities in such a way will not impress me, rather," she took her hand from the aching spot, perturbed, "it will only encourage me to speak to you even less."

"Less than never? Because, in that case, I can have it arranged for my abilities to be _unimpressive_ all of the time."

She scowled and moved to brush past him, but he stopped her again, this time with a hand on her shoulder. She attempted to shrug him off, but he merely turned her to face him.

"Were you looking for me?"

She wriggled free of his hand and backed away from him, folding her arms and unconsciously squaring up her shoulders, "No, I was attempting to hide from you."

"You have an interesting way of doing so, wandering right into my dojo." He circled around her, unable to keep the sarcasm from his voice.

"Well, I didn't know it was your training area until I stumbled upon it, now, did I?" He continued to circle around her, as if her were appraising her. "Taisho, why are you staring me down? Surely, a man…demon…spirit…man… whatever you are! Has something better to do than tease me. Something like getting that arm of yours healed?"

"All in due time. However, I am currently enjoying acting out my revenge on the young woman who has made my past week so incredibly difficult."

Kagome, jet lagged and cranky, decided she did not have the patience to work through whatever mood he was in. Her questions could wait. For a third time she attempted to walk away from him. But once again, he stopped her, his hand wrapping round her shoulder, halting her in her tracks.

"Taisho, you should mind where you put those hands of yours. Not all women enjoy being handled. And I am one of them."

The man was silent; all they could hear was the whistling of the wind in the trees and the babbling of the water over the waterfalls. It was at that moment that Kagome wished she had her own sword so she could run it through his other arm. The pressure on her shoulder disappeared and when she looked back at Taisho, he was standing several feet away, a calculating look on his striking face.

"I only wished to speak with you. You make such interactions increasingly difficult. As I recall, we seemed to interact in a more friendly manner only three or so days ago."

Kagome blushed and couldn't help the nervous laughter that escaped her lips, despite the churning anger in her middle. "I think you startled most of the contempt out of me."

The man's lips twisted into a knowing smile, the look on his face leering, "I will make sure to startle you from now on then, for those interactions were far more pleasant than the communication we have now."

"And, Taisho, is this your way of apologizing to me? Those heavily veiled words and sarcastically smug charm?"

He unsheathed the sword and returned to his earlier practices, "And what pray tell, would I have to apologize for?"

"Oh, I don't know, coercing me into touching a mysterious sword, guilting me into helping you save the world, not really explaining anything about my current situation? You take your pick." When the man did not respond, she ran a hand over bloodshot eyes. Tired of the game they were playing, she decided to get to the point. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"I will be leaving for a short trip. Hopefully I will be back in four days or so. Five at the latest, I would think. Meanwhile, you are to stay here. You may wander the grounds and go wherever you please, so long as it is within these gates and walls. When I return, I will, hopefully know what it is I am supposed to do with you."

"You sound so thrilled to have me along for this journey." She rolled her eyes, completely exasperated with his shifting moods.

"Of course I am. It is not everyday that I have the pleasure of being affronted in my own home."

Kagome waved a dismissive hand, as of to say he should expect it from now on. "Well, if that's all, then I am going to go sleep. I haven't had much rest lately, and you are to blame for that as well."

Before she could turn to leave, Taisho was by her side, leaning down toward her, a mischievous glint in his eyes. He could feel her unease grow at his proximity and she could see he enjoyed manipulating the situation to suit him.

"Do me one favor while I am away, Miss Higurashi," his voice was soft, barely above a whisper, face within inches of her own, "Do not get into anymore trouble."

Kagome, who had found herself frozen and horrified at his closeness, could do nothing but stare at him. He had seemed so strangely distant since he had reclaimed the sword. As if his return to power had eradicated most, if not all, of his ability to see the humor in a situation. But now, smirking down at her, she was reminded of the man she had bumped into in the hallway of the museum. The interesting and polite, reserved and mysterious man.

"Was there anything you wanted to ask me?" His voice was smooth, but she could hear the wicked dry humor bubbling beneath the surface of his serious tone.

As her brain began to function again, she blinked her wide eyes and moved her small hand to his stomach, gently, but firmly pushing him away.

"I think it can," she swallowed the lump in her throat, "Uh… I think it can wait a few days until you return."

Taisho responded by leaning closer, using his height and presence to intimidate her, to tease her, to repay for her impertinent silence of the past day. Kagome, feeling as if her personal space had not only been violated but also brutally murdered, gave him a curt shove. It did not knock him off balance, she was far too small to do so, but it gave her the opportunity to slip from his grasp.

She narrowed her eyes at him, still lacking most of her speaking abilities, and then turned and bounded down the steps without so much as a backward glance. As she ran down the stone stones, her momentum nearly sending her toppling, she couldn't help but wonder at the way he seemed to enjoy teasing her, even now, after all his power had returned and he had a devil to kill.

Shrugging away the butterflies and her irritation, realizing he had artfully avoided her questions once more, she hopped back across the pond, unaware that Taisho watched her from the top of the hill, satisfaction swirling in his haunting eyes.

* * *

Taisho stood in the middle of the busy road, ignoring the small sea of humanity that teemed around him. The dirt from the path, kicked up by all of the passersby, both animal and human, whirled in the air, making it difficult to see. Along the sides of the busy street were small, erected tables and tents, farmers selling their produce and animals. Poor peasants wives and children hurried from shop to shop and tent to tent, buying what they needed, never what they wanted.

Taisho frowned. This was a far cry from the states, from his home, from the industrialized world. This was what truly reminded him that he had lived for so long. Some things never changed. The rural towns and hamlets would always hold some sort of timeless quality, never to be completely overtaken by the momentum of the world.

Taisho became aware of multiple sets of eyes, staring at him. He could feel those that were human and those that were not, both crawling over his skin, alerting his senses. But he was not worried. Even with his struggling ability to control the sword and his power, he had nothing to fear. He was, in short, the most powerful being within miles, regardless of whether or not he had re-mastered the sword.

The return of his power had been exhilarating. The restoration of his very soul, a powerful, undefeatable, force unto itself. The resurgence of his power had forestalled the loss of his arm, an arm that was currently searing in pain. As he stood in the street, carefully avoided by all the farming and peasant folk, he rolled his shoulder, gritting his teeth.

He did not like to admit weakness. He did not like to admit when he was in pain. But even with his sword strapped to his back, with all of the power, he could still be debilitated. Had he been thinking more clearly, he would not have suffered the injury in the first place. After, all, he had once been a great and powerful man, practically immune to pain and injury.

Of course, much of his current predicament had to do with his magic, his aura, and his power. He could not rein it in nor hold it within himself. It was a power that refused to infuse itself within his body and soul. But he would capture it and use it in good time.

He would wield it soon. He _would_ master it.

Not for the first time did he wish he had never made the blade that currently hummed on his back. But he was there, despite all of the difficulties of the blade, in the midst of the street, in pain and in need of powerful magic. To be a pawn of the sword was unthinkable, but to do anything that would give the demon the upper hand was as well. Swallowing the murderous rage he felt upon seeing the image of the demon in his mind, he began to walk through the streets, old memories returning. Taisho squinted at the morning sun, shrugging off his inadequacies

It had been many years since he had set foot in this particular town. But, as he had previously observed, little had changed. His eyes traveled along the road, looking everywhere at once, always at the ready to defend. Before long, Taisho found the end of the lane, where the ramshackle buildings began to fall into dilapidated messes of wood and mud bricks, the people and their bustle left behind. The dirt road turned into a well-used path, leading into the wooded areas behind the town center.

The man picked his way carefully, through the trees and underbrush, well aware of the hum of power that began to throb over his body. Ahead, through the break in to the brush, he could see a small clearing, circular, lined with aged trees and greenery. He halted before a large, crudely constructed torii. Reaching out, he ran his hand up the spirit gate, feeling the aged branches and wood, the magic that lay within them. A hush seemed to fall around the clearing, the silence emitting from a small temple, bathed in sunlight.

Taisho stepped over the gate and felt the zephyr sweep past him, gauging his intent. It was sweet breath of wind, but one that could turn deadly in an instant. It held an aloof warning, a threat of the power that could be summoned if needed. In response, Taisho let his aura expand, no longer attempting to rein it back, hold it at bay, or control it with his authority. For a moment, everything fell silent, the trees becoming still, the blades of grass holding their breath, the songbirds trembling in the absence of air, and then, an upward push of his energy blasted skyward, stripping the leaves off the trees, nearly wrenching the temple off of its support beams.

Unsheathing the sword, Taisho held it before him, bringing the blade up to his face, to allow his left eye to gaze through the circular hole near the tip. His left hand, despite the injury to his shoulder, raised, palm flat, resting the tip of the blade in his flesh. His hair whipped around his face as blades of grass from under his feet were ripped out of the dirt and caught up in the force of his magic, dancing around his body in a hypnotizing whirlwind of green.

"If you do not cease your attempted flaunt of power, I will tear down that temple before you can draw another breath." His voice echoed strangely, as if not one man, but two were speaking, a low guttural growl to his deep smooth tone. His left eye began to gleam, centered in the sword's missing circle.

There was a moment's hesitation and then the magical aura that had threatened him subsided, but remained constant in the space surrounding him. Taisho drew in his own magic, as best he could, stilling the air, willing it to calm. He waited, ignoring the pain of his arm, watching the doorway of the temple. A shifting in the shadows alerted him to the presence of the priestess.

She stepped through the doorway, her face stoic, but her eyes held a level of disdain that he could read from across the glade.

"So, it is you," her voice was quiet. She did not appear surprised to see him.

Taisho lowered the blade, his own face twisted with distaste. "Who else would it be?"

The woman stepped further into the light, daring to perch on the top step of her temple. She was breathtakingly beautiful. Dark black hair, the color of the darkest winter's night, fell well past her waist, heavy and flowing. Deep dark eyes regarded him with reserve, eyes that were both arresting and deadly. Taisho was not for one moment taken in by her strange magnificence. He would not have trusted her for all the power in the world.

She took another step, long carmine and cream garments flowing gently in the wind. Strapped to her back was a leather satchel, a sign that she had expected him to be an enemy, a readied bow in her hands and arrows in her pack, easily within her reach to use against him.

"There are many beings who are powerful and deadly and it is in my best interest to protect myself." She glanced around the glade, eyes taking in a quiet reconnaissance.

"I came alone. You need not worry that I will ambush you."

Her eyes fell to the still bleeding wound on his shoulder. A small smile touched her pink lips, her eyes lighting in memory.

"I see you have finally managed to outwear my handiwork."

Taisho sheathed the sword in one fluid motion, an attempt to lessen his threatening presence.

"And can I expect your help to fix the wear and tear I have administered?"

The woman carefully unlatched her leather satchel and pulled it over her right shoulder.

"As much as I would like to refuse you… I will not. To say no, and deal the consequences, would be too costly. Even to see you suffer."

Taisho narrowed his eyes and she turned, disappearing into the temple. Slowly, he followed her inside, disappearing from the sunlight, his white form slowly being enveloped by the darkness of the shadows.

* * *

Kagome wandered around the garden, wishing she had something to do. Mostly she just wished that she had Ajax with her. She hoped he wasn't too lonely. She still felt the most overwhelming sense of guilt for leaving him back home. She hoped that he was being pampered beyond belief and not missing her at all. That would be far better than him remembering that she had left him.

She girl sighed and sat down on a large rock. She hoped that the rest of her time spent with Taisho would not consist of him disappearing and leaving her to mope around his overly large home. Not that she particularly wanted to be in immediate danger and fight demons; she just wanted something to do.

She hated herself for thinking it, but she hoped he would return soon and tell her what was going on. She wasn't even angry with him for leaving her out of the loop. In the past few days, with her minimal contact with the man, she had actually felt lonely. It wasn't that she missed him.

No, she did not miss him.

But she missed home, her dog, and a sense of normality. And unfortunately, Taisho was the link to all that. He was the only one she knew. The only one in the entire country. Plus, even someone who would get on her nerves would be better company and far more entertaining than sitting alone in the koi pond and surrounding gardens.

However, Taisho's absence had afforded her an opportunity to sort through all of her thoughts. She was finally free from both the overwhelming presence of the man and his sword. Without the two overpowering presences always hovering around her, encroaching on her mind and ability to reason, she could finally recall the things she wished to think about.

It was true, what he had said on the pier. She had always wondered if there was more to the world than met the eye. As the daughter of an artist, she had been born and raised to think with her mind and to imagine all the possibilities that could not be achieved in reality. Even as she had grown older and put silly childish fantasies aside, there had been times when she simply wished to disappear into the world, to find out what made it work, and hope it was more than she expected. The gut feeling, the ability to know when an ill will was coming her way, had not unnerved her until she had met Taisho and had held his sword. The blade had called out to her, and had expanded her awareness. An awareness that she had already possessed, simply amplified by the mythic weapon.

Kagome crossed her legs, propping her elbows on her thighs, cradling her chin in her hands, staring down at the calm water of the pond. She remembered Taisho's words. He had said something to her, something about receiving the last puzzle piece to complete the whole. She was both amused and irked that he could read her so plainly. Perhaps she was exceptionally easy to gauge or perhaps, Taisho was keeping something from her. She snorted, stifling a laugh.

Of course he was keeping things from her. She just wished they weren't things that pertained to her very being.

He had yet to explain what the Protector really was. What she was. She was not sure her mind could fathom more than he had already told her. She had already had about as much of the fantasy and spiritually otherworldly as she could take. And, yet, she still desired to know. She was far too stubborn to let something so significant pass unnoticed.

Kagome would have continued to wallow in self pity had she not felt a most excruciating pain rip through her left arm and shoulder. She cried out as another even more painful jolt went through her body, causing tears to well behind her eyes. Vision tunneling, narrowing into blackness, she felt herself fall off the side of the rock, rolling in agony.

Wherever Taisho was, whatever he was doing, he was in pain.

And as Kagome lay on the ground, squeezing her eyes shut, cradling her shoulder, she hoped that if Taisho were dying, falling into the afterlife, that he would take her with him.

* * *

_Thanks for reading! Reviews are always appreciated and I try to respond to each one individually! Hope you liked the chapter! _


	12. Upside down and Inside out

_Here is chapter 12. Thanks for all the reads and reviews. I hope you like the story so far!_

* * *

**Chapter 12**

**Upside down and Inside out**

Taisho gnashed his teeth, snarling, making the very earth and trees shake with his fury. He reached up his hand and gripped the arrow shaft that was buried into his left shoulder wound. Waves of purifying energy flowed over his shoulder and rocked his body, piercing his core. Closing his eyes, he waited, steadying himself, focusing on the end. When the last wave of energy burned through the injury, he gripped the arrow and ripped it out of his skin, faltering, darkness overtaking his eyes and mind. He could still feel his hand, pressed into the cool grass, holding his body upright, feel the breath enter and leave his lungs, and hear the shuffling of arrows as they were repositioned in their pack.

"Woman," he growled, beyond furious, the only thing keeping him from killing her was the pain that rendered him incapacitated, "You failed to mention that the way to treat me was to shoot me while my back was turned."

"It wasn't the only way. I could have simply thrust the arrow into the poisoned spot with my hands, but that would not have given me the satisfaction that I am now feeling. I quite like the idea of a mere priestess being able to shoot such a powerful being with an arrow. It seems to boast for the priestess who can do such a thing. Who would have thought a woman could match the great and powerful Taisho's speed and agility?"

Taisho's response was to send a wave of his white-hot magic toward her, burning the grass off the ground where she had stood not a moment before.

"I don't think killing me will help you out of your predicament."

"And that is why I did _not_ kill you." Taisho finally looked up from the ground, his shoulder still screaming, although, much to both his relief and anger, it was slowly subsiding.

The woman merely smiled and continued to rearrange the arrows in her satchel, as if she had not just shot one of her quarrels through one of the most powerful beings in the world.

After several long moments, Taisho felt the return of his power, surging to the wounded area, maintaining its strength, helping to drive out infection and magical poison.

"I applied the heaviest of my purifying powers. It will make you weak for a time. A fortnight at most. But, given that you have the sword in your possession again, I can assume it will take less time than I specified. However, your natural energy will be unconsciously channeled to the area and it _will_ render you weak or weaker than you normally would be. It's a powerful magic needed to keep that arm part of you. I am surprised your body did not reject it sooner. How did you maintain it for so long without all of your magic?"

Taisho slowly stood from his crouched position, examining the flowing blood on his arm. It was a deep crimson, but there, where only the eyes of someone so powerful could see, were tiny amethyst and white bursts of light, infused with his blood. Taisho scowled.

As soon as he had walked into the temple, the doors had slammed shut behind him, and he had turned to see what the threat had been. His extraordinary hearing had alerted him to the drawing of the bowstring, the snap of the air as an arrow sang through it. He had turned back around, in perfect time to see the arrow plunge, dead center, into his wound, the magical powers of the priestess sending him back through the doors and into the glade.

Priestesses.

Taisho hated priestesses. They were nothing but a plague.

A plague that he occasionally needed when it suited his will.

"I concentrated much of the energy and power I retained on the arm. I left enough to still have a minimal amount of my powers. As the world changed I did not need my powers to survive on a day to day basis and the strength it took to maintain the arm did not jeopardize my life or leave me weak to enemies. It became an unconscious flow to the area. I had little difficulty with it until I was injured."

Taisho flexed his arm, already feeling the sinew and muscles previously detached and cold, warm and rejoin the rest of his body. He curled his left hand into a fist, filling it with his magic, a dark smile spreading across his face, curling his lips menacingly. The wound began to close and he let the power in his hand recede, fading into his skin to join the collection of strength circulating around his shoulder.

Looking up at the priestess, he saw a strange, unreadable emotion cross her features. Her dubious manner, so unlike the icy, detached one he was accustomed to, irritated him.

"What is it?" He snapped loudly, startling several songbirds from a low tree nearby.

She blinked and immediately composed her face.

"How did you reclaim the sword so quickly?"

Taisho closed his eyes as he rolled his shoulder, cracking his neck, revealing in the relief of having two useful arms. "I found the Protector and she relinquished it to me."

"Yes, but how?"

Taisho opened his eyes and stared the woman down. "Must I repeat myself? I thought I explained not more than a moment ago. Are all priestesses so thickheaded or is this a trait specific to you?"

The woman did not rise to his insult, she simply watched him, pale face calm and devoid of all emotion.

"You have not re-mastered the blade, yet, then." Her voice was quiet, knowing.

Taisho's golden eyes traced the outlines of the forest, following the broken line of vegetation, leading skyward.

"I am of the opinion that no one can truly master all of its power."

The priestess turned and started for her temple, moving slowly, as if she were weighed down by an immense burden, "Taisho, if anyone can master it, you can. And, although I do not presume to know how you are to go about doing that, I would suggest you include the Protector in your attempts to wield the blade. I know that she is not here now, or anywhere close, but I can feel her presence through that blade. She is very closely tied to it." The woman mounted the steps to her temple, reaching a tired hand toward the railing, pulling herself onto the last stair. "I would also suggest you have her ask the blade about the next step in your journey. I have a feeling it will remain difficult and obstinate. It wants something. Something from you… before it will willingly help."

Taisho, by the time she had made it to the door of her temple, was crossing the threshold of her spirit gate. He paused underneath the gateway, staring ahead, feeling a tug somewhere inside. He could sense the priestess, in the eaves of her sanctuary, facing the shadows, her back to the man who was the only window she had to the outside world.

"I will tell him I saw you."

And then he stepped passed the barrier, over the threshold, and slipped into the woods, following the long forgotten path back to humanity. In the temple, the priestess smiled, a solitary tear tracing its way down the contours of her cheek.

* * *

Taisho grimaced as he reached his left hand over his shoulder, his fingers, still slightly numb, grasping the hilt of the sword, pulling it free form the sheath on his back. The sound of metal upon metal rang clearly throughout the field surrounding him. Early afternoon light spilled down onto his features, illuminating the ivory of his figure. A soft wind blew; disturbing the long blades of grass, whispering quietly, the only sound that could be heard for miles.

Taisho steeled his nerve against the pain and then twisted his wrist, manipulating the sword in his left hand, slowly increasing the speed, until the blade was nothing but a dark blur in his hand. Carefully, he transferred the weapon to his other hand, repeating the process, twisting his hand artfully, gracefully arcing the blade.

He could feel it begin its approach; it sensed him on its lands. He had time yet, to test his arm, to still his power, to bring a measure of control to the strength that hovered around him, in him, and through him.

Cool metal met his left hand and then his right, easily sliding between his two arms, like liquid, like clay, molding to his will.

He took a graceful step, the blade dipping toward the grass, slicing off the greenery, sending the blades flying into the wind. They were an emerald green that sparkled, an annoying reminder of a certain set of emerald eyes. Unable to stop his thoughts, he found his formerly empty and blank mind dwelling on her.

Kagome Higurashi.

Since the attack upon his home, she had been increasingly more difficult to handle. If it were a different time, Taisho would have managed the situation differently. He would have told her what she could and could not do. He would have given her strict rules and ways in which she was to address him.

But he had not. He had wanted to. Desperately. He had wanted to still her tongue, make her regret her sharp words, and show her he was not a man to be trifled with. But he could not. He was not that man any longer. Even with the semi-return of his power, he could not be the man he once was. All of his time wandering the earth had affected him. And he was only just beginning the realize it.

And, he thought, agitated, as his sword dipped again, slicing off more of the vegetation, sending it soaring into the air, to rain down around him, he could not deny the fact that he respected her. She was such a funny little thing. An authority in her own right. This was both pleasing and worrisome. It gave him a sense of satisfaction, that she was so determined; her bravery would be needed if the future were as bleak as he suspected. But her strength of character would only be amusing when he did not need her to follow his rules, to do what he said, to fall in line. When the time came, and Taisho knew it would, she would test him and push him to the edge. It was then that he would find it difficult to keep his calm, to realize that becoming angry with her would do nothing to help him.

But, it was inevitable. She was stubborn and smart, unwilling to be manipulated. That character of hers was so great that she even still had control over the sword, something Taisho was hesitant to inform her of. Even the priestess's words had unsettled him. That the Protector's essence could be felt through the sword was both a testament to her unknown ability and a sign that she was in greater danger than he had previously thought. If his enemies could sense her through the blade, even when she was nowhere near, he wondered what else could be gleaned from her connection to the weapon.

And that led him to wonder exactly what she was.

When he had first felt her presence, it had been a distant thrumming in his mind, hazy, calm, small, but strong. When he had seen her in the coffee shop, he could feel it running over his skin. It was not unlike the essence of the first Protector. But, he had soon realized it was much stronger. The dim but constant light and power of her aura had surged upon her connection with the sword. It was as if her connection to the weapon had released all that was inside of her, formerly pent up, held down, and hidden.

And all of this meant he had to keep her close, until he knew, once and for all, what she was capable of, how her fate was tied into his.

Taisho paused in his agile steps, feeling the approach of his enemy, his target practice. He waited, watching the way the wind shifted. It was almost invisible, even to him, but there were white nearly opaque flashes of lines, as if the breeze were a strand of hair or ribbons, beautiful and alluring, dancing before his eyes. Darker threads of the wind moved in an unnatural way, alerting him to the approach of the tainted spirit, the baleful demon.

Taisho raised the sword, holding the blade flat parallel with the ground, raising his right arm, straightening it to be at the height of his shoulder. He waited, feeling the being approach, its eyes alight with malicious excitement. It had found a prey.

As darkness sped toward Taisho, nearly at his back, the man dropped, his right knee touching the ground, his left leg extended, bracing his body as he spun the sword down and backwards under his right arm, neatly catching his enemy in the chest. The wind spirit fell, impaled on his sword, shuddering once before sliding off of the dark metal, melting into the grass, its essence carried off by the wind, slowly purifying, returning to its natural state.

Taisho slowly raised himself, sheathing the sword, watching as the dark threads of wind became clear.

The man shook his head, an obtuse smile touching his lips.

"Weak."

He turned and departed, dividing the grasses as he walked through them, as if he were a king of the earth, and all of nature were expected to bow down to him.

* * *

Kagome had willingly put herself to bed after falling off the treacherous rock in the garden. Her arm still ached to the point of seeing stars. When Taisho returned he was not only going to buy her something nice to make up for her immense pain, he was going to red eye Ajax all the way to Japan. As she lay, withering in the bed, she hoped he was feeling double what she was.

This was not what she had planned on. She had thought all that connection through the sword business would stop after Taisho had his weapon in his hands. But it seemed that not only had she been severely misguided in this assumption, she had also had it completely wrong. She was no longer sensing the sword and its feelings. She was sensing Taisho.

There were times, as she slept, or attempted to, that she thought she could see into his mind. She thought she saw faint glimpses of wherever he was. It was never anything she could put her finger on. It was merely a quick flash among thousands, all of them moving at lightning speed through her dreams.

After she had slept for a good twelve-hour period, her shoulder had hurt less, but it still ached far more than it should have. It was an odd pain; it seemed not only to ache in her arm, but ache in her soul. Kagome, wishing to busy her mind with something else, took the opportunity to wander around Taisho's home. It was then that she had stumbled upon his impressive library.

As she wandered into the huge room, she found herself wishing that Dr. Wesley could see Taisho's collection of books. It would put the curator's shelves to shame.

There were books older than she could imagine, all categorized neatly, carefully maintained. Unable to ignore her museum training, Kagome left the oldest tomes alone, even though her fingers itched to leaf through their dusty pages. She wandered through the many rows, her sharp eyes gliding over the names of each anthology, some she could read, some she cold not, remembering, categorizing, filing away information to unearth later, if she should ever find a reason to research while at Taisho's mansion.

She had spent the better part of her morning leafing through a book of Japanese history. It was full of stories and legends, not so much of a history as it was a fantasy. But given what she knew of Taisho, she was not certain of either its truths or its falsehoods. Most interesting was a mention of a shogun, a powerful man of the west. The dates in the book were a bit off, but they seemed to be relatively close to the time before Taisho probably would have domineered over the western lands. She had wondered, as she skimmed the words, if the shogun was Taisho's father or perhaps, even Taisho himself. If that were the case, she could say, yet again, that she was truly impressed and incredulous.

She had only put the book away when the aching in her shoulder grew to uncomfortable heights. Crawling back into her bed, she had watched the shadows move across her floor, thinking about all she did not know, all that Taisho had yet to tell her. He was still such a mystery.

Kagome felt when he returned. She could almost see his feet as he stepped within his borders. Had she not been in the middle of a fitful nap, her only semi-release from the ache, she would have jumped up and ran for him, intent on one, barreling him over and two, slugging him across his immaculate face.

Instead, Taisho had to find her, curled in her massive bed, withering. She had not answered his first knock, nor his following dozen or so raps, and had not even opened her mouth to retort when he demanded she open the door.

"I thought I told you not to get into any more trouble." He said dryly, as he sauntered into the room.

Kagome threw a pillow at him with the arm that did not ache. "This is not my fault. This is your fault. This is me feeling the reaction to whatever you did to your shoulder. This is me wishing I could either speak or read Japanese so I could either ask your staff for Advil or read the descriptions on the bottles to know what I am putting in my body. This is me wishing you would hurry up and get over here so you could heal me or do something to relive the massive amount of pain I am in and then, quickly, so as to appease my temper, which is rising quite steadily, tell me why I am feeling this way to begin with."

Taisho's face deepened into a frown, his brows drawing together in a line.

"Good day to you, too, Miss Higurashi."

Kagome, eyes still closed, buried her face into the bed, and threw another pillow toward him.

"Seriously, Taisho, if you don't so something about this I am packing up and going home."

Taisho, composed his face, hiding his frown, and moved to the bedside to crouch down, "You would not want to go home just yet, I would think, given that I brought you a present that should do much to lighten your mood."

Kagome bolted upright and nearly knocked him over as she jumped out of the bed.

"Is it what I think it is!?"

Taisho caught her in his arms, his hands moving to her shoulder, feeling the area for injury. When he did not find the source of her hurt, his frown deepened. She wriggled, trying to get free of him.

"One moment, Miss Higurashi. If I know you, you will ask me later, why I did not heal you to begin with." He imparted his healing powers, as best he could with her squirming so. "What a remarkable recovery," he drawled, voice steady and calm, unconcerned.

Kagome raised her eyebrows, "If I didn't know better, I would almost say you are in good mood. What happened?"

He nodded to his shoulder and she peered up at it.

" It looks much better. Does it hurt less?" Her eyes studied the area where the wound had been. His shirt was spotless, no more blood leaked through and his arm seemed to be functioning perfectly well.

"Does yours?" He kept his hands on her shoulder, waiting for her to reply.

Jumping up and down in her excitement, all she could do was nod.

"Yes. Mine has healed as well. He's waiting for you in the garden."

Kagome wrenched free from his grasp and tore through his house, a huge grin sparkling on her face, reflecting in her eyes. She threw open a set of double doors and was greeted with the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.

Ajax.

* * *

Kagome had broken down into tears, so delighted to see her dog. Taisho watched as the girl hugged the furry beast to her, the dog squirming in its own happiness. As he leaned on the open doorframe, he tried to comprehend how she could be so happy to see the animal after only being separated for a few days. He had made a mental note to ask her later when there was a greater possibility of her speech to be coherent.

After many minutes of simply hugging her dog, Kagome consented to Taisho's polite request that she walk the grounds with him. He could see the surprise on her face as he voiced his request, and he reveled in his ability to bewilder her and make her nervous. He was beginning to think that the only way to derail her personality was to fluster her. His display in the dojo seemingly proved this thought to him. He just hoped his affect on her would not wear off any time soon. At least not before he found an easier way to deal with her.

They wandered along the different paths of Taisho's land and he explained that his acreage extended for many miles, that the house and gardens only comprised a small part of his total land. They passed by the dojo and meandered up and over the hills behind the training area, talking quietly.

"When did your arm begin to hurt?" His voice was subdued, he saw Kagome glance at his face, puzzling over his tone.

They had come to rest by the side of a small lake, the water lapped gently behind them, masking the other sounds of nature.

She thought for a moment. "I think it was two days ago. I am not sure."

Taisho watched Ajax, trailing behind them slightly, his short legs tripping over roots and piles of leaves. He sighed inwardly, as much as he knew Kagome was still confused, trying to sort out all of the events of the past week, he could commiserate with her to some extent. Everything had occurred so quickly. Taisho was a man who liked to have a plan. A plan that was his and his alone. His current situation left him feeling a measure of helplessness that unnerved him.

"When?" He finally asked, after he had watched Ajax waddle around the area, "When during the day did it begin to hurt?"

Kagome found a low rock by the waters edge and sat, staring into the algae infested pool.

"I don't even remember. I was sitting in the garden, daydreaming no doubt, and all of the sudden the pain just hit me. I knew it was you, too. It was as if I could sense you. Almost like," she paused, looking upward through the trees, "it was like I could see you in my mind, but it was not an image of your body or face. It was just a recognizable _feeling_ of you. I can't tell you what time it was. Maybe midmorning? Perhaps early afternoon? Somewhere in there."

Taisho nodded, rolling her words around in his head. His mood blackened visibly and Kagome shifted uncomfortably. He could hear the sharp intake of her breath as she avoided the sweeping gaze of his eyes.

"Why did I feel that?" Her voice was soft, and she did not look at him. Instead, her interest was centered on her dog, rolling in a patch of dried leaves. "Why did I feel _you_?"

Taisho moved to stand by her, his gaze fixed on something in the distance, his thoughts heavy.

"I believe you felt a certain amount of the healing process on my shoulder but I do not know why. This is something I did not experience with the previous Protector. There was no way that I would have known the extent of her abilities, however. She was never given a chance to see the effects of her action. The effects of giving the sword to me. But, even though this is an entirely different chain of events, I cannot help but notice that you are much more… much more, than she was. Perhaps that has something to do with this strange connection."

Kagome's glance was sharp, but her face was blank, unsure of his words.

"What does that mean? I am more? Are you referring to this… this thing that I have, the ability to sense things? I don't even know if that is the right way to describe it. But I do know that when the sword came into my grasp, something inside of me amplified."

Taisho drew the sword and held it before them. "I do not know exactly what you are. I simply thought you were the Protector, a young woman with an overly bright and strong soul, meant to bequeath the blade to the master."

She shook her head and ran a hand over her brow, massaging the headache he was sure was growing within.

"I don't understand. You speak as if I should know all about magic and mythical swords, but you really have yet to divulge anything of substance to me."

She was becoming agitated again. He could see the muscle spasm in her cheek, her hands clench into fists. And while he wished to forestall another mammoth argument, he did not wish to divulge information to her. Not all of it. She may have been the Protector, but Taisho was not a man to trust. Trust was gained slowly, not in a few days, not by being named a mythical watcher by a weapon that refused to submit to him.

Taisho struck the blade forcefully into the ground, burying it in the damp earth. Kagome reached a hand out to run her fingers across the smooth metal. Above her, Taisho felt the whisper thin sensation of a breeze across his cheek.

Fighting the urge to shiver, he turned his back to her, gazing out at the land.

"Every being that has a soul also has an aura. Those with the ability to see them or sense them can tell much about a person, simply from an aura. I could sense yours when I first came near you. I knew, by then, that the sword was traveling toward the Protector. When I found out it was to be delivered to Worthington museum, I waited and watched and let my senses do the rest. It was not hard to pick up on your presence. Yours was familiar to me because I dreamed of you and the sword was leading me to you. It is a strong aura as well; I could sense it from far away. Yours… is… different. I do not know how else to describe it to you. This is as if you were asking a seeing man to describe the earth to a blind man. A man who has never seen anything but darkness. Because you have no previous comprehension of magic and the power that comprises the world, you cannot understand."

Kagome was on her feet again, pacing, he could hear the crunch of the leaves, pebbles, and grass under her feet.

"That is not an adequate answer for me, Taisho. I want to know what I am. I have always had this… sixth sense if you will. It was more like a warning sign than anything else. A little tap on my shoulder, telling what to do, mostly to help me, advising me not to cross the street just yet, that a certain day would be a bad one, that someone wanted to pick a fight with me. I don't know why, but I never questioned it. Not until I touched that sword and started seeing visions. Visions! I was _seeing visions_. And the feeling from that sword was like my 'sixth sense' only, as I said, it was intensified."

Taisho turned around and met her gaze. His patience was waning. Whether it was her absolute insistence on an answer or that he had no answer to give her, he was agitated almost as much as she.

"Miss Higurashi, I do not know what to tell you."

Kagome stopped pacing and her face melted into an emotionless a blank and nameless emotion. She turned to fully face him, her shoulders tense.

"Why don't you know Taisho? I thought you were an almighty being who slaughtered demons. A man who knew how everything worked. Is there a reason I am even here? Why did you drag me to Japan? I thought the sword wanted _us_ to do something. Why won't you tell me what that is?"

Taisho narrowed his golden eyes, her voice grating on his nerves.

"The sword wants you, but I do not know why. I have already told you my thoughts on why it would choose a human for its Protector. But these are merely my own deductions. I have no idea if they are correct. And it was necessary for me to come here to heal my arm. If the sword wanted you and the weapon was with me, the only logical choice was to bring you, too."

Silence filled the forest. Kagome's bright eyes dimmed, her face molding anger to confusion.

"You tricked me."

"I did no such thing. I never once lied to you."

She stalked up to him, surprisingly quick for one with such short legs, and then, to the best of her ability, put herself in his direct path, right in, or rather, right under his face.

"You didn't tell me _anything_. You omitted. You told me what you needed to in order to get your cursed weapon. You used me to get to your end. Now, I could look past all that, since you did it to save the world, but then you dragged me here. You guilted me into it with all of your words and your stupid authoritative presence, and not once did you ever tell me what the future held for me."

"That is because I do not know!" He heard himself snap, his voice startling her back a foot.

She shook her dark head, and as the light from the setting sun spilled over her features, and her saw the dark circles under her eyes, the tiredness that lay within.

"Again, Taisho," her words were barely above a whisper, her throat working for more, but she was unable to summon the strength needed to speak forcefully, "who is the master here? You or that blade?"

Taisho could feel the anger rise in the pit of his stomach, burning throughout his chest. She must have seen it, too, for she took another step away, averting her eyes, watching the fading oranges of the sky, barely visible through the dark leaves.

"I don't even know if that is your name." She laughed and shoved her hands in the pockets of her jacket. When she looked at him again, he was unable to read the emotions she displayed. She seemed to be beyond exhausted, standing there in the middle of his lands, unsure, uncertain, lost, and alone. "You aren't going to tell me anything are you? You won't let me get hurt, you'll protect me, but only because you need me for that unknown purpose. My involvement in this is only to be necessary, never desired. I suppose I can understand that. But, Taisho," his gaze flickered to her eyes, "this is my life. And it's upside down and inside out… because of you. The least you could do is tell me the truth. I am not asking for you to spill the secrets of your soul. I am asking for you to be honest in anything with regards to me."

Taisho would have opened his mouth; he would have spoken to her, had her life not been so directly tied into his.

They were connected now, somehow, whether it was through the sword or through some other means, he did not know. But they were connected. And to tell the truth, to explain anything that dealt with her, was to reveal everything about himself. He did not trust her. He knew she was trustworthy, but over half a millennia had taught him both the evils and the goods of the world. And he did not trust either.

He was a solitary man on a mission and that he would stay.

He opened his mouth to speak, but his senses suddenly and immediately alerted him of a demon, not far from where they were, just outside his barrier, pacing in the woods. The man reached for the blade, wrenching it free from the ground, and with a flick of his wrist, rid the metal edges of the dirt.

"Go back to the mansion," he ordered, turning to run toward the barrier.

Kagome blinked at the command, her anger and hurt melting into perplexity.

"What?"

But he was already gone, running down the hills, dodging the trees, jumping over fallen logs, his feet carrying him as if he were flying.

* * *

Kagome ran, stumbling over roots and vines, the grade of the incline seeming to become steeper, and in the fading light it was difficult to see the treacherous pitfalls. She laughed at herself as she ran, her arms out in front of her, warning her when she overstepped and nearly collided with a tree. Her hands brushed over the trunks of the trees, helping maintain her balance and propel her along.

Among her many flaws, her inability to learn languages included, she could also admit to being as stubborn as a child and as curious as a cat. Those two characteristics often resulted in a catastrophic amount of trouble for her. However, those were two of her traits that were non-adaptive.

She never learned.

She saw a flash of silver, set against black. Taisho was just ahead of her, walking slowly. He appeared to be investigating his fence, a black wrought iron enclosure. She wondered how the iron bars could keep anything in or out, there were large gaps in between every bar. If Ajax really wanted to, he could squeeze right through. Kagome slowed her paces, and grabbed onto a low branch of a tree, steadying her clumsy body, watching Taisho from the side of the steep hill.

He turned and looked over his shoulder, scowling.

"I told you to go back to the mansion."

She shrugged, "You won't tell me anything, so I guess I'll have to see things with my own eyes."

Taisho ran a hand across the fence, his hands glowing with white light. The fence responded, turning opaque, filled with his magic.

"What about that creature of yours? You left him all alone?"

She made her way down the rest of the hill, to stand behind him, her eyes scanning the forest past his glowing barrier.

"I told him to go back to the house."

Taisho turned, raising an elegant eyebrow, and Kagome saw faint markings on his cheekbone, illuminated by the fading light above them.

"He knew what you were saying?"

She walked forward a few more feet; her interest now centered on the spot on his face. "He's a very smart dog. I told him to go home and he set off down the path. He'll be just fine." She closed the distance between them, coming to rest at his side, still studying his face. "What's out there?"

Taisho looked out over the darkening woods, his power beginning to hum in the air around him. "A demon or a tainted spirit perhaps... perhaps something more."

Kagome chuckled darkly, "Oh, of course. It's only a demon or some malevolent being from hell. Don't worry, Kagome, they're like vermin, easily extinguishable and I deal with them all the time."

Taisho smirked and walked away from her, his hand wrapping around the barrier, the fence suddenly parting to let him through. Kagome blinked back her amazement and moved to follow him.

"No, Miss Higurashi, you stay right where you are." The hole in the iron closed behind him.

Kagome slapped the fence decisively, "I want to know what is going on, Taisho!"

He smiled at her over his shoulder, " And if you shut that mouth of yours you will. But from behind that fence."

Before a smart retort left her lips, he turned to face forward, his sword swinging off of his shoulder, guarding him against the form that flew out from the forest, intent on mauling the man. Kagome jumped backwards, her knees suddenly weak, so weak that she sat down into the grass and leaves, too startled to do anything but stare at the man and beast before her.

The creature was taller than Taisho, by about a foot or two, she could not tell, it moved so quickly. It flowed through the air, using it, abusing it, swirling around the man, taking swipes with barely visible misty claws.

She watched, horror struck, as Taisho stood, raising his sword to block the attacks, but otherwise, his body frozen in its spot. He was incredible. She had never seen anyone move with such a grace and ease. The sword was simply an extension of his body, man and blade moving as one.

Kagome, unconscious during his first fight, had not truly believed his capabilities until she saw him before her, fighting the unknown being. And as she watched, she found herself relatively certain that he was not even trying.

Taisho turned slightly, his eye wandering over to Kagome. As his attention wavered, the demon swept by him and charged at the barrier. Kagome did not have time to throw up her hands, turn and run, or scream for help; her brain hardly comprehended the lightning movement of the demon.

Taisho lunged, placing himself in between the demon and the barrier, his sword extending, driving into the monster. Kagome watched as the demon became completely solid, a tall, slim, snow-white creature without any distinguishable features, and then, before her eyes, the being melted into the air and ground, dissipating on the wind.

She breathed a sigh of relief, her heart slowing down, and her ability to reason retuning much faster than it had on her first day of demon contact.

Before her, on the other side of the gate, Taisho had yet to move.

"What," she swallowed, blinking her disbelieving eyes, "what was that?"

The man did not move, nor did he make any response. She stood and walked over to the gate. Hesitantly, she placed her hand on the iron bars of the fence, hoping that the gate would not retaliate against her touch. When it did not, she reached her hand through the bars and brushed her fingertips over Taisho's shoulder.

The man tensed and vehemently shrugged her off, his movement quick and angry.

"Do not touch me." She stifled a gasp, hearing a strange echo in his voice.

From the forest, deep within its depths, there came a strange noise, a vibration in the air, the flapping of wings. Kagome withdrew her hand, pulling it to her throat, her neck suddenly aching, as if invisible claws were wrapped around, phantom hands that reminded her like nothing else, of Taisho's fated enemy.

The darkness swarmed, a thousand or more dark objects flying for Taisho. The man remained still; his head lowered, the sword in his slackened right hand, pointed tip down, resting just above the grass.

The dark objects swarmed, circling him, some attempting to launch at her, immediately blown back by his barrier. She could not make out exactly what the flying creatures were. Her eyes registered feathers, but the black beasts were nothing like any bids she had ever seen before. Their eyes blazed and they carried the scent of decay, flesh falling off old bone.

Black feathers littered the sky, falling outside of Taisho's barrier, none finding their way past the fence. The creatures did not attack, nor did Taisho move.

Kagome could feel familiar, raking eyes. But from where the gaze originated she did not know. She did know that she had felt it once before, back in Taisho's mansion as the demon shell had attacked her, its bleeding red gaze never leaving her face.

"Miss…" The sound of Taisho's voice snapped her to attention. He seemed to be struggling with something, his shoulders shaking with the desire to remain straight and upright, "Miss- H-" his voice was strange, echoing around the woods. "Kagome. Kagome, get away from the fence."

She remained where she was, confused, "But-"

"Just do as I say," he snarled, his back still facing her. She retreated quickly, securing herself behind a small tree, peeking out from behind the trunk.

"You asked me who the master was, me or this sword. At this moment, I am most certainly not the master. I told you that I always struggled to balance the power within and I am telling you again. Only, this time, it is more difficult. I do not know why you are here, but the one who healed my arm seemed to think that you were necessary in the mastering of the blade. Perhaps that is the intention of the weapon." Kagome, realizing the difficult admission on his part, granted him, in her mind, a leniency to explain later. He remained still, unperturbed by the movement of the winged beasts, his back facing the girl. But she could see him shaking, and this time, it was not from a power struggle. He was laughing, darkly, his strange voice echoing above the flap of wings, " These _spies_," he spat the word, "are here to test my abilities." Dark chuckles continued to roll out and up from his chest, setting the hairs on her arms and neck on end, "And I intend to give them quite a show."

Kagome felt a cold sweat break out over her brow. The sound of Taisho's laughter unnerved her. She turned fearful eyes to the dark beings and then focused on the man again.

"Now," he grit out, as if he had his teeth clenched together, "I want you to run back to the mansion. Do not walk. Do not stop. Run. Hear me when I say that I currently have little to no control over my power and I am about to wreak destruction on this area. Now go!"

Kagome turned and bolted, sparing him a single backward glance, seeing the air around him change, suddenly blaze with arcs of white and gold light. She stumbled, her shoes slipping on the wet earth as she bolted up the hill, dragging herself over the obstacles of nature, her heart in her throat.

Behind her, she felt a sudden hush, as if the forest had drawn in a breath, and then the sound of an explosion, the blast of Taisho's strength and power. She felt the outward rush of air, originating from where the man stood. Leaves, grass, and small twigs blew past her, her dark hair whipping around her face, momentarily blinding her. But she did not stop. Not as she ran down the lantern lit stone steps, not as she ran across the raised steps of the koi pond. Not until she had slammed the door of her room shut, and sank to the floor in frightened relief.

* * *

_Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it. Reviews are always appreciated. I will be writing some author notes on my profile page, they might answer some questions about the story, if you have any. The next pdate will be a week at most.  
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	13. Dusty Words

_SO SORRY. would not let me update! But here it is. Provided the problem does not occur again, the next chapter will be up in 4 days. If this ever happens again, check my profile page or my reviews and I will leave a note telling you about the problem. Thanks for the reads and reviews! Also, author notes can be found on my profile page.  
_

* * *

**Chapter 13**

**Dusty Words**

Aeron crossed his legs uneasily, staring at the pages of numbers before him. He sighed under his breath, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose, unconsciously switching his crossed legs. He glanced up from his work, sneaking a glance at the other accountant in employ. She did not seem to notice him as he watched her, dejectedly, his shoulders bowed.

The museum was empty without Kagome.

Aeron had not seen her everyday when she had worked at Worthington. Even on the days he had seen her, their run-ins had been short and usually unpleasant.

No, not unpleasant, really.

More along the lines of a lively, sarcastic, slightly disdainful banter. Mostly on Kagome's part. Perhaps, though, he mused, his hands flipping through the stack of work on his desk, he was seeing the whole situation through rose-colored glasses.

It was just that she was so plucky and off key. She gave an air to the place that was an almost tangible. It made the halls seem less dusty, more bright and buoyant.

_Buoyant?_

Aeron snorted and shook his head at himself, removing his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose, attempting to stave off a headache. He put his head in his hands. He could admit it. He was man enough.

He was worried about her.

Taisho had swept her off in a flourish of good looks and limos, and there had been no word from her since. She hadn't even stopped by to pick up her paycheck. She hadn't thought to call Aeron and tell him that Taisho had not kidnapped her.

He silently chastised himself. He was not her bodyguard. She was a grown woman. She could do whatever she pleased.He was simply annoyed that he had just begun befriend her, only to have her disappear into the oblivion that was Taisho.

And yes, he liked her. He thought she was interesting. But mostly, he had simply wanted a chance to get to know her. After seeing her zip through the halls, always with a mischievous glint in her eye, a smile not too far from the surface of a serious face, he had wanted to speak with her, befriend her, and find out why she always looked so damn impish.

Aeron blew his breath out of the side of his mouth, his dark hair fluttering away from his eyes and glasses. The air inside the room was positively stifling. He reached a hand up and loosened his tie.

At that moment in time, he would have given anything to be out in the field with a shovel, digging up some priceless artifact. Instead, he was indoors, long legs crammed under a tiny desk, dress shirt constricting, glasses slipping off his nose, number crunching.

Abruptly, with no warning what so ever, he stood, pushing his chair backwards across the marble floor, the legs of the chair grating loudly. His colleague looked up, startled, and he winced.

"Sorry."

She smiled slightly, but said nothing. Aeron resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He would have given his right arm for some decent conversation.

"I'm going for a coffee break. Back in a few."

The woman nodded but did not lift her head from her work, and Aeron, more annoyed than ever, pushed open the office door and stalked out into the hallway.

As he walked through the corridors, enjoying the way his shoes echoed loudly, now understanding why Kagome so liked to wear those uncomfortable heels (better to amplify the noise), he found himself, rather suddenly, at her former office door.

The door, which he had been gazing at steadily, opened, surprising him. A young woman, perhaps around Kagome's age, looked up at him, letting out a small gasp. And then, much to Aeron's disbelief and further irritation, she giggled. Not a small embarrassed giggle.

No. It was far worse.

It was a high-pitched, nasally, annoying giggle. The girl eventually managed to control herself and shook his hand. Letting out another giggle, she informed him of her name, which he promptly forgot.

As she hurried down he hall, Aeron scowled.

"Good god, could this place get any worse?" He snapped out loud, glaring at the girl's retreating back, before stomping out of the museum, intent on a cup of coffee and some peace of mind.

* * *

He ran through the woods, panting, confused, enraged. He could not have stopped even if he had wanted to. The feeling of the woods and the air rushing over his body was far too exhilarating. The sun had set, there was nothing but the dark and the trees and the stars, swimming in the black void above him.

As he bounded through the thick branches of ancient trees, the miles began to grow longer, and he further distanced himself, unable to control his mind and his body. Both were far too free to be constricted again.

He leapt, the branches snagging his body, tugging lightly, but the limbs were not large enough to elicit any pain. The underbrush snapped as he sped along, cowering under his might. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, he was aware of his lapse in control, his utter inability to restrain his body's actions.

The part of him that was always subdued, always stoic, and always calculating was severely displeased with his actions.

But, for a moment in time, that part of him was lost to the beast, the strength, and the power that had eluded him for centuries.

* * *

Kagome was woman enough to admit her fear of the dark. At 21 she still kept a small light on in the hallway of her apartment. She was not about to pretend that the dark and the shadows of the night did not fill her with unease.

She was hovering around the koi pond, biting the nail on her thumb, dancing in nervous anticipation, her eyes darting around the garden, examining the shadows, shrinking when the breeze moved the plants within the depths of the early morning dark.

After a sleepless night, one in which she waited to hear and feel the steps of Taisho, returning to tell her that he had killed the strange creatures, that he was perfectly fine, she was therefore nearly sick with worry, when he never arrived. She could feel the sword humming in her mind, somewhere in the distance. It was the farthest from her it had ever been.

She dropped her hand, her teeth finding her lips, biting the sensitive skin until she tasted the metallic tang of her blood. Turning toward the woods her eyes searched the darkened tree line.

Taisho had told her to run but he had had not specified when she could or could not return to the spot she had last seen him. And despite her silly fear of the depths of the night and early morning, she could not fight her morbid curiosity, her anxiety.

Why had Taisho not returned?

She took a step toward the tall, winding stone steps, placing one unsure foot on the pond stones, and then she promptly hopped backwards.

If Taisho had been defeated, then she was vulnerable. And if his enemies had found a way to wield the sword… she did not understand the implications of this past her simple and monumental fear of the idea. Not to mention, she did not have enough money to fly herself and Ajax back to the states if he had decided to up and die on her.

Steeling her nerve, she vaulted across the pond and up the stone steps before her fears could intensify. She found herself breathing heavily, eyes everywhere at once, willing the sun to rise sooner, to dispel the darkness and distress. Her sneakers snagged on roots and leaf piles, but she could not stop.

Since her own eyes had shown that demons did in fact exist, old nightmares had returned, bringing a reality that scared the young woman more than she cared to acknowledge. She felt now, even at rest, as if she were running, just out of the grips of some enemy. And now, running through the forest, the sun not yet cresting above the horizontal planes of the earth, she felt as if something monumental was happening, as if every moment she wasted in hesitation, would ultimately leave her with more questions.

She breathed in raggedly and jogged down the incline she had traversed only the evening before. The sunrise was beginning to peek through the trees, bathing the tops of the trees in a golden glow. For a moment, as the sun crested the horizon, the dark swaying branches appeared to be on fire. It was beautifully breathtaking, a dark mesmerizing splendor. But Kagome could not relish in it. She was far too worried.

Vaguely, she wondered if this unnatural apprehension was a product of her attachment to the sword. It was not unlike the feeling she had experienced when she had fled from the demon, dragging the blade along with her, intent on keeping it away from the evil taint.

It was an innate prodding somewhere deep inside: Protect the sword.

But, how the hell was she supposed to protect it when she didn't know where the master of the blade had run off to?

Reaching the end of the grade, she slipped on the wet earth, and toppled, the wrought iron fence appearing in her whirling view. Hauling herself up off the dew covered grass, she let her eyes trace over the fence and the land beyond.

No sword. No handsome, silver haired man.

Kagome slowly made her way to the fence, peering through the dark hair that fell into her eyes.

There were no signs of a battle, none other than the forest debris, scattered upwind of the explosion, melting in with the rest of the underbrush.

Kagome sighed and wrapped her hands around the wrought iron. The presence of the sword was still there, rolling around in the recesses of her head. She winced as it hummed in her mind, vibrating strangely. But while she could feel the sword, she could no longer sense her connection with Taisho. Somehow, it had been severed and lost.

The resounding snap of a large branch directed her attention to the forest beyond the confines of Taisho's barrier. Her emerald eyes narrowed, searching for signs of movement. For a moment, she thought she felt the piercing gaze of something or someone, deep within the dark of the timberland. She waited, hands sweating, fingers curling around the cool metal bars of the fence, tension building in the air around her.

Above, the sun crested the tops of the trees, filling the bottom of the forest hills with orange and pink light, forcing her to look away and lower her lashes, protecting her eyes from the bright morning rays. With the light came a feeling of peace, dispelling the hesitant energy of the night.

Kagome backed away from the fence, gaze intent on the woods.

"Taisho, you had best be alright," her voice was soft, but borne by the wind and her bond with the sword, it swirled deep within the glades, carrying it to straining ears.

Slowly making her way back up the hill, she did not hear the heavy movement from the dark, cool, hidden corners of the forest, the snap of branches, and the slight quiver of the earth, as a lumbering beast made its way back into the wilderness.

* * *

Kagome stood on the tips of her toes, her fingers reaching for the book, brushing its spine. She reached again, one leg popping off the floor, her tongue sticking out to the side of her mouth, one emerald eye squinting as dust fell into her face.

Giving up the semi-graceful attempt, she reached her hand up as high as she could, and jumped, fingers curling around the tattered edges, barely snagging the book. She jumped again, and this time she not only succeeded in bringing down the book she desired, but about a dozen more. They toppled, and she threw up her hands, covering her head, cursing as an especially large, hardcover tome landed square on the top of her skull.

She looked down at the mess around her feet and sighed in exasperation. If any of those books were expensive and priceless, she would probably have to forfeit her 'pay' from Taisho to pay for the damages. That was, if he ever returned from his demon slaying, or whatever it was he was doing. Kagome, tired of worrying about the man, and tired of her worry morphing into anger, had decided to return to the library to research.

If Taisho refused to enlighten her, she would do it herself.

Crouching down, she sifted through the books, disturbing the dust, filling her nostrils with the dirt, sneezing uncontrollably. Deciding it was best for her sinuses, she left the books in a pile and extracted the one she wished to read, hurrying away from the haphazard heap, trailing dust behind her.

Kagome had found a small table and chair, tucked away in the recesses of the library, hidden in a corner next to a large window, overlooking part of the beautiful grounds. She spent the better part of her morning pouring over a book that spoke of the legends and mythical creatures of Japan.

She was not sure how much she had actually learned in the process, but she had filled many pages of her notebook with facts and words she thought might somehow be connected with her situation. As she glanced through another book, her eyes fell on a familiar word.

_Shikon. _

She searched her memory, fingertips hovering over the word, a heavy silence descending in the air around her. Her eyes widened as she realized it was the name of the archaeological site in which Taisho's sword had been found.

As she read the text her heart began thundering in her ears. It was poorly translated English, confusing and vague. But, there it was, in print before her.

_Shikon. _

Her eyes scanned the page quickly, jotting down notes. When she reached the end of the page and any mention of the word, she glanced down at her notebook, her hands shaking in excitement.

Jumping up from the table she ran the length of the long aisle between shelves. Skidding to a stop, she darted between two of the enormous bookcases, searching for the book she needed. She slipped to a stop, the rubber soles of her shoes nearly disappearing out from under her. Pulling a leather bound anthology into her hand she opened it and began read, eyes skimming the pages, searching for the information she needed.

Kagome ended up on the floor, books spread around her, pen flashing furiously over the paper of her notebook. Occasionally she jumped up to run to another part of the library, bringing a book back to the massive pile she had started.

When she could not write anymore, she sat back, massaging the cramp in her hand, reading over all she had written.

Most of what she had read and noted would need further study. Less than half only made the barest of sense to her. But Kagome could pick out a few things that not only struck her as odd, but also told her that Taisho knew more than he had let on.

She scowled. That was not unexpected. It just annoyed her that Taisho thought she was so easily persuaded from her endeavors.

As if he knew she were thinking about him, the man and the sword suddenly became clear in her mind. He was already at or over his border, well within her range of feeling. Kagome stood up, shaking her person free of dust. Jumping over the mess she had made, she hurried through the library and toward the window at the back of the huge room. Wedging herself between the wall and the table, she gripped the ledge with her hands, and hauled herself up, her chin barely making it over the wooden sill, eyes quickly searching the leafy grounds below.

She felt her indignation rise as she saw a flash of silver and white, moving with inhuman speed, on top of the hill within and around the dojo.

"He's been gone an entire day and he's _training_? He can't even come to tell me he's alive and I don't have to fear for my life!?"

Her hands slipped and Kagome fell, knocking into the table, bruising her hip and sending her already incised temper into overdrive. Rubbing her side, trying to dispel the pain, she glanced down at the notebook once more, unconsciously grinding her teeth.

She certainly hoped Taisho knew what he was to do with her now. Because if he didn't make up his mind to either let her go on with her life or inform her of the peculiarities surrounding her new one, she was going to be one furious Protector.

Willing her temper to cool and the flush of her face to recede, she left the library, and headed for the dojo. The determination in her eyes reminded all of the staff whom she passed of the strange man they worked for, and the staff found, much to their dismay, that she appeared far more frightening when angry, than Taisho could ever hope to look.

* * *

Slowly, the man raised his hand to the iron fence, and as if the magical barrier were affected by his fatigue, the iron bars parted slowly, haltingly. The man trudged, as gracefully as an exhausted being could, through the underbrush of the forest, up the through his property, to finally stop at the dojo. He let out a long breath.

He was, much to his umbrage, physically and mentally exhausted.

But, he needed to train. Now, more than ever. Dragging his sword up before his eyes, he glared.

"I will master you."

Taisho grimaced as the sword flared in his hands.

Kagome.

She was furious, stomping up the hill, rage barely in check. Taisho, well aware that he had little to no patience on this day, hoped he could avoid another verbal conflict; it was only the appearance of the demon that had forestalled their earlier argument. And if he had any grasp on her character, he could reasonably assume that they would pick up the altercation where they had left off. He did not have the wherewithal to deal with both a stubborn young woman and a stubborn mythic blade.

The sword pulsed again.

She would be the death of him.

He turned, just as she appeared on the top of the stone steps. Her small frame was tense, her eyes blazing with pent up anger. Her face was pale from either a lack of sleep or the same anger that was steadily burning in her eyes.

"Miss Higurashi."

She cocked her head and parted her lips in an icy half smile, "Taisho. You're alive. Should I be surprised?"

The man smiled slowly, his golden gaze beginning to gleam. He caught his words before they left his mouth. He had almost asked, in a clipped and exasperated tone, what he had done now to make her so angry. Instead he diverted his attention to the red cloth bound notebook in her shaking left hand.

"Ah, ah!" Kagome admonished sarcastically. "Eyes up here." She pointed to her face and then held up the notebook, shaking it, taunting him. "We'll get to this sucker in a moment."

Taisho stiffened. Perhaps, if he had been in a better mood, he would not have been so aggravated by her tone, the defiant glint in her eye. What was more, he had been gone for an entire day, completely out of her range, and a soon as he returned, there she was. Angry.

"And, to what do I owe this appalling attitude?"

Kagome's bland smile dwindled into a smoldering stare, "Don't snap at me, Taisho, I was not the one that left for an entire day. _After blowing up part of my forest_."

"I did not blow up the forest. It is notmine and if you had any observational skills you would see that it is still entirely intact."

"My power of observation is perfect. I was trying to make a point! How do you think I felt when you told me to run like hell and then there was an _explosion _because you had to kill your enemy's demon minions, and then you didn't come back for a day?"

Taisho was rendered silent. When his voice came back to him he chuckled lowly, his initial anger momentarily leaving him. Leaving him… with nothing but contempt. Not for the girl, but for his previous day, for the demon, and for the damn sword humming in his hands.

Of course, he did not appreciate her attitude. He was already on edge and her actions were threatening to push him off the precipice of his calm.

"Miss Higurashi, surely you were not worried about my well being."

Her jaw dropped and she stared at him with an mixture of disgust and incredulity, "I was not worried you arrogant bastard. Not for _you_ anyway. I was worried that if those demons killed you, _I_ would be swept off by an evil and sadistic being! That was worrisome. Your well being has already been assessed. You told me you were an invincible behemoth of a man spirit and as I deduced from your smug self-appraisal, you believe yourself to be more than capable of handling such interruptions in your life. And don't think your conceited proclamations were lost on me! They weren't."

"No," he drawled, his lips tightening, "Obviously not."

"Stop acting so condescending!" She snapped.

Taisho frowned at the shrill sound. He was not in the mood for this.

"Miss Higurashi, can this not wait for another time? I have been away from my lands for a day and I must make sure that all of my barriers are strong enough to keep out any malevolent beings who might harm you." His voice, filled with sarcasm, echoed loudly throughout the dojo, bouncing off the ceiling, making the girl wince.

Kagome crossed her arms, her shoulders shaking in the effort to contain her temper. "My questions have been avoided for too long, Taisho."

Taisho refrained from taking her by the shoulders and shaking her, knowing it would do little to alleviate the situation, although it would probably give him an immense sense of satisfaction.

"What is it then? What is so damn important that you have to affront me at this particular moment?"

Kagome did not even blink at his harsh words, she instead, flipped open the notebook and walked up to him, holding it in front of his face.

He squinted, reading the word that had been hastily written on the page. Glancing over the pages of the notebook, he met her eyes.

"I fail to see what is so pressing."

Kagome lowered the notebook and leafed through the pages. "This isn't the only pressing matter, Taisho. But as it is, I would like these questions answered first. You wouldn't tell me anything so I took it upon myself to research in your library."

"When did I say you could rifle through my personal belongings?"

She laughed, voice fricative with her dry tone, "You did. When you told me I could go anywhere within the walls and gates. What else was I supposed to do while you mysteriously disappeared into the woodlands of Japan? Oh, I want you to explain that in a moment, but first, back to this." She poked a finger at the word scrawled across the page. "I want to know what Shikon means. I want to know why the name of the site where the sword was discovered is mentioned in numerous legends."

Taisho felt his lips curve in amusement. "It does not concern you."

"Yes, it does. You told me that the sword you possess would be used to defeat a demon. You are having trouble wielding a blade that I was somehow roped into protecting. You need me, you think, to master the blade. Now, the name of the archaeological site were the sword was found is called 'Shikon' and the name appears hundreds of times in the texts in your personal library. And while my Japanese might be lacking, I am intelligent enough to pick up on a few things, namely, after having met you, the importance of legends. Now, since all of those events are intertwined, and at least a few have something to do with my life, I think that yes, the site name and the site do concern me."

Taisho simply stared at her.

Perhaps it was not such a blessing that she was so astute. He had never thought she would sift through his thousands of books simply find information. That was a serious miscalculation on his part.

But, he was dealing with Kagome Higurashi.

Of course she would do something that.

He sighed inwardly. He had never experienced a headache before, but the sudden pressure in his brain was strangely similar to the symptoms of such an affliction. Depsite her angry demands, the pain in his head, and his general fatigue, he was not about to explain everything and anything to her. He had his own questions to answer, his own thoughts to muse over.

"We are not discussing this now."

He took a step forward and hooked his hand around her arm, intent on dragging her out of the dojo and to the mansion. She snatched her arm back, glaring at him.

"Stop that!"

He turned back to face her, tired of the charade, "What is it now, Miss Higurashi?"

"Stop touching me! Stop pulling me here and there, trying to get me to do what you want with your overpowering physical strength! Using your power and height as a way to intimidate me! I am not an idiot Taisho. While I may have been flummoxed when we first met, letting you whisk me around wherever you wished, I do not appreciate you thinking you can use a form of physical contact as a way to persuade me into doing what you want."

The smile he cast her was devoid of all emotion, frost taking up residence in his eyes. "It was not meant as a persuasion. It was meant for you to realize that I do not wish to discuss this with you now, and that you are to come with me back to the mansion."

"No."

His eyes narrowed and he could feel the rise of his anger, prodded by the absolutely infuriating girl before him. All thoughts of attempted charm and niceties left him. He reached forward and grabbed her arm again.

"Don't touch me!" She yelled, pulling free from his grasp, backing away even farther from him.

He was far too fast for her.

When she saw him move, her eyes widened, and her natural reaction was to fend him off. Her hand snaked out, as if she were going to slap him, or keep him at bay with claws she did not possess. But it was too slow an attempt to deter him. Age-old reactions, born of many battles and years of training took hold, and in a single move, Taisho had Kagome on the floor of the dojo, effectively pinning her with his hands and legs. His sword, forgotten in the scuffle, lay on the ground next to them, mist pouring off of the edges in dark ominous clouds.

Kagome stared up at him, her eyes conveying a mixture of surprise, horror, and outrage. She struggled against his hands.

"Taisho, take your hands off of me, now!"

Taisho restrained her easily. If he were not so drained, he probably would have laughed at her absurd effort.

"Miss Higurashi, you will calm down immediately." He stared her down, his face hovering above hers, waiting, patiently, until she ceased her futile struggles. Finally, realizing he was not going to release her, that her strength was never going to overpower him, she stopped moving and simply glared at him.

"Desiring answers does not constitute pining me to the floor. You have no right to touch me in this way. Taisho, you may be a billionaire immortal warrior, but that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want to or with me."

Her words hissed, falling off her tongue like poison, and for a split second, Taisho thought she might attempt to bite him. She appeared angry enough to do so. When she didn't, he loosened his hold of her hands. His knee, pressing on her abdomen, holding her onto the floor, lifted slightly, allowing her the room to move. When she made to disentangle herself from him, Taisho narrowed his eyes, and once again she stilled her movement, captivated, and perhaps, a little frightened by the quiet command in his gaze.

He sighed, the strain in both his body and mind lessening. When he looked back into her eyes he felt a twinge of regret.

They could not continue to interact like this.

His head bowed slightly, and he closed his eyes. "Miss Higurashi, what am I going to do with you?"

She shifted slightly, working her wrists out from under his hands, uncomfortable with his hold on her. "I would suggest you get off of me and then answer my questions."

Taisho shook his head, mildly amused at her never-ending spark of defiance. He shifted back, releasing her from his hold. Standing, he pulled her up from the floor, steadying her. She was not quite balanced on her feet and he was therefore, mildly surprised to feel the sudden pain of her hand against his face.

More bewildered than angry, he touched his cheek, wondering how she had managed to put such force behind her blow, how he had managed to underestimate her once again. He had not expected her to retaliate, not after he had so easily subdued her first attempt. He looked down into her furious eyes, and found the words he most hated to utter, rolling off his lips.

"I apologize," he said shortly, his voice clipped and quiet, revealing his discomfort and his distaste for both his actions and then his admission of fault. He looked out over the forest, elegant brows drawn together.

Kagome rubbed her wrists absently and moved away from him. He could still feel her anger, hovering just below the surface of her calm façade. "Never do that again," her voice was soft, but he knew the seriousness of her words, and a dull uncomfortable feeling resonated somewhere within his chest. Taisho looked back at Kagome. The girl was staring at him, her face impassive. "Don't tell me this is a normal occurrence for you."

"Hardly," he growled, feeling testy, " Rare few people are allowed to speak to me as you did and live to tell the tale."

He saw her lips part, a small smile breaking out over her face, kindling in her eyes. It was a look that made him stiffen with suspicion. There was a dangerous gleam in her eyes, a wickedness to the curve of her lips. "As I recall, you told me, rare few people ever make you break out of your silence and ask questions. You seem to be a relative chatterbox around me. Not to mention I am very infuriating and I have lived in your presence now for over a week and as far as I can tell, I am still alive. Perhaps your behavior can be forgiven. Given the fact that you seem to be shrugging off your natural inclination to be a complete and total ass… Oh, wait, that might be a mistake on my part, because after all, _you just pinned me to the floor_."

Taisho wished he had kept his mouth shut. He should have learned, by now, not to speak with her in such a blithe manner. She seemed to sense his discontent, and she shook her head, vexed, but her anger had ebbed slightly, the tension in her frame easing. For this, the man was glad; their previous interaction was a reflection of both their states of mind. They had been thrown into the situation together, a twisted, complicated story, and it did not help alleviate matters that they were both head strong and even in his case, somewhat hot tempered. Although, Taisho was reticent to admit his inability to control his emotions, he did not like to think that they shared such a disability. In any case, their current moods were a product of a highly stressful week, one in which he would have expected anyone else to have had a nervous breakdown.

But no, there they were, standing in the dojo, arguing.

Kagome finally spoke again, the threat in her demeanor disappearing, but the seriousness of her words remained.

"Taisho, two things: One, I deserve respect. I will not tolerate being treated in that way. Ever. If you don't believe me, try it again. I will be out of here before you can blink."

"I do not believe you possess powers of speed."

Kagome faltered, staring at him incredulously before quickly recovering. "And I did not believe you still possessed a sense of humor. Your behavior in the past few days would suggest a lack of witticisms. Perhaps we are underestimating each other."

Taisho's face darkened and he cursed himself under his breath. She was beginning to affect him. Soon, he too, would be unable to prevent his mouth from speaking the thoughts in his head.

"Perhaps. What was your second _thing_?"

She pushed her hair back from her face and Taisho noticed several large pieces of dirt and dust, wafting out of her mane. He resisted the urge to smile.

"Two, answer my questions."

He was silent for a few minutes, listening to the wind and the birds in the trees. Finally, he met her gaze.

"Very well."

He could see the shock that his words caused her. His quick response had surprised him as well. Apparently, his mind and body had lost their desire to fight with her. He waited, silently, watching her work things over in her mind, trying to formulate and remember all of her questions.

"What happened yesterday?" She finally settled on asking him, descending to sit on the floor of the dojo.

Taisho, also finding it too draining to stand erect, followed suit, sitting on the ground, leaning backwards to rest against a support post for the roof. He regarded her carefully, throwing an arm over a raised knee. Kagome's eyes trailed to the fingernails of his hand. Seeing her eyes narrow, he curled his hand into a fist, and her gaze snapped back to his face. The sharp points of the claw like nails bit into his skin, but he did not wish to draw her attention to them again. That was one subject he would not allow her to question him about. Not today.

"The creatures were spies of the demon. The wind spirit that attacked me seemed to be exacting its revenge. Apparently, a clan of twisted wind souls is now in league with the demon."

"Why?"

Taisho cracked his neck, feeling the pressure release all the way down his spine, a satisfied half smile gracing his lips before they returned to their customary frown.

"I dispatched of one of their clan members several days ago." She opened her mouth to ask another question but Taisho continued before she could speak, "The spirit was tainted and I deemed it worthy to practice my sword skills on. It was more of a purifying ritual than a death. His pure soul dissipated and returned to the natural element from which he was born. Apparently, his brothers did not agree with my extermination of the taint. And thus, they found my enemy and sided with him."

Kagome blinked, "Alright then. So yesterday you lost control and killed all those creatures?" He nodded. "And then where did you go?"

Taisho remained silent. The girl, sensing his desire to avoid the subject, visibly sagged.

"Well, I can see you were _really_ serious about answering my questions."

Taisho leaned his head back, resting it against the pillar. He closed his tired eyes and attempted to pacify his aggravation.

"I do not wish to discuss the subject at this present moment. Ask another of your questions."

The girl shifted, keeping a watchful eye on him. Again, he felt the stab of guilt. He should not have reacted as he did. It was a lapse in judgment and a mar on his honor. He sighed; he did not like admitting when he was wrong. Instead of dwelling on his actions, he pushed the thoughts aside, knowing that they would resurface later, when he was alone, when a perceptive girl was not sitting before him, dissecting him.

"Do you really not know what I am? Or what is happening to me?" She paused, her attention moving to a spot in the floor. "I could literally feel your presence when you came back just now. I knew the moment you came within my… well, I suppose you could say, my 'range'."

He thought about her words for a moment, carefully constructing his answer. "I do not know what you are. Perhaps there is no word for it. Perhaps you do possess some type of otherworldly ability or perhaps you simply have overly developed senses. The sword may have chosen you because you have this unknown ability or perhaps it chose you for different reasons entirely. My own thoughts on the subject, as I have previously mentioned, lead me to believe that much of your… admirable… character traits, may have been the reason you were deemed worthy of protecting the blade. I do not lie when I say that you are simply different from other beings and humans with power that have crossed my path. And I do not lie when I tell you that I have no way to explain how you are different. Perhaps it is best if you accept it and understand that I am not the one who can answer your question."

Kagome nodded and pulled her knees up to her chest. Her attention was diverted to the stone steps, where, a fuzzy, waddling body appeared. Taisho watched as the girl's face broke out in to a smile, the worry lines that had been creasing her face and dimming her eyes, forgotten, lost in the joy she felt at the sight of her dog.

The corgi sidled over and sat on her feet, staring at Taisho. The man felt the hackles on the back of his neck rise. The damned dog was staring him down. He narrowed his eyes at the creature but his concentration was broken by Kagome's question.

"Is Taisho really your name?"

He nodded, "Yes."

"You don't have a first name?" Her question caused his breath to catch painfully in his chest.

No.

No one had addressed him by his first name in hundreds of years. He might as well have completely forgotten his former forename. That seemed preferable to the conversation that was now occurring.

Kagome studied him intently, and then her face softened. "It's alright. I don't need to know everything. I understand."

No, he thought, tearing his eyes away from her face, no, no one quite understood, least of all her.

"I don't want to disrupt things from your past, Taisho."

"Then do not," he snapped, his voice tight with restrained anger.

The girl ran her fingers over Ajax's collar, touching the ID tags, not at all bothered by his tone. "I will try not to, but I seem to remember warning you that I do not do this everyday. My natural curiosity is piqued when demons come to my door. Can I ask you another question?"

"You just did." Seeing her stiffen, he inclined his head, nodding his consent, "Yes."

"Why are you having such a difficult time controlling the weapon? I assume more so now, than ever?"

Taisho stood abruptly, his agile form unfolding to overshadow Kagome, still sitting on the ground. He strode over to the blade, the misty substance still hanging around the air above. He peered down at the forged metal and then looked back at Kagome.

"If I knew, Miss Higurashi, we would not be in our current predicament. It may be because I am weak, a product of the healing and channeling of my magic to my arm. But, I do no not know why it continues to resist my authority. I do not know why I cannot control my abilities." His thoughts dwelled on the words of the priestess, but he did not find it necessary to inform Kagome that the sword might, perhaps, want something from him.

His gaze trailed over Kagome's back, and she turned, sensing his gaze. "All of the events that have occurred since we met have left me with little that I know for certain. But, now that I have experienced the lapse in my own control, I am considering the wisdom of including you in my attempts to master the sword." He gestured to the mist that swept through the air, slowly making its way toward Kagome. "And as I have been previously made aware, you have a connection with both the sword and myself. Perhaps, I need you more than I care to acknowledge or to admit." He cast her a wry smile that she did not return.

The man walked back to her and extended his hand. For a moment, she gazed at the offered palm, her eyes hovering on the sharp extensions of his nails, no doubt debating the consequences of letting him touch her. The moment of hesitation passed and she placed her hand in his, allowing him to pull her up from the floor. His eyes fell on the dust in her hair.

Snagging his fingers in the dark strands, he roughly tousled her hair, dispelling the dirt and dust. At the sudden touch, she froze, her eyes peering at him through the mess he had made of her long sweeping bangs.

"Your research seems to be manifesting itself in your hair."

This time, she had to fight not to smile. "Mind those hands of yours," she murmured dryly.

Vaguely, he wondered if he should allow her to retaliate against him more often, the physical attack seeming to have dispelled her bad mood far better than any other trick he had employed. Upon the creeping magic of the blade, Taisho sobered quickly, the amusement he felt disappearing into the seriousness of the situation, his eyes once again centered on the sword. They walked back over to the blade; the man and girl paused, examining the sword.

"What are the markings on the hilt? I have been meaning to ask you for sometime."

Taisho crouched next to his weapon, waving his hand to clear the air of the grey mist. "They were words. Originally they were written in kanji, magic spells and wards for the weapon. The forger wrote them under the direction of the mage."

Kagome bent at the waist, cocking her head as she examined the red hilt. "But, they aren't kanji anymore."

At his feet, he felt the press of a warm, stocky body. He scowled as Ajax sat in between he and the girl, effectively making it known that the dog did not like Taisho being so close to his human. Taisho shifted, moving away from the troublesome beast, his attention returning to the blade.

"No, they are kanji no longer. They are something else entirely. I have been trying to decipher the markings since I first saw the sword. Unfortunately, I cannot."

"Perhaps it has something to do with your ability or, rather, your inability to control your power. Maybe if they could be read, you would be able to wield the sword." She narrowed her eyes as she attempted to further examine the strange markings.

"Perhaps."

He reached for the hilt, hand descending through the cool, foggy essence of the weapon, fingers brushing the metal. As his hand wrapped around the hilt, he felt the electric charge wind around his fingertips, and then, before he could snatch his fingers away, he felt the pulsing, searing pain as the sword rejected him. Taisho threw up his arms, crossing them in front of his face, calling up his barrier, the magic of the blade blasting him backward, his feet skidding on the ground, his balance barely maintained.

Kagome, with not near the reaction time as Taisho, stood frozen on the spot. She looked from blade to man and back again, her mouth hanging open in astonishment.

"What in the holy hell was that?"

Taisho, breathing raggedly, stared at the weapon, his fingers still burning from the warning the sword had given him. Slowly, he turned his gaze on Kagome and she shrank under the withering blaze in his irises.

"It seems you have rescinded my rights as the master."

A dark eyebrow rose. "I never. How could I if I don't even know how I gave it to you to begin with?"

Taisho shook his hand out, small sparks flying off his fingertips, the power around him surging, the air becoming visibly dark. "You have the ability to both bestow and rescind the right of master," he spat his words, stalking toward her as he spoke.

"You never informed me of this," she responded, her own anger beginning to build.

He stopped in front of her and leaned down, his still burning fingertips curling around her chin, forcing her to look into his eyes. Where his skin met hers, he could feel the electricity spark, and she winced at the slight pain his touch caused.

"I am telling you now. And I am also requesting," his teeth clenched, words forced out menacingly, "That you give me back my rights of the blade. Miss Higurashi, I am normally a patient man, but never am I so when dealing with a demon."

"Don't threaten me, Taisho." Her voice was quiet, but it never wavered, and Taisho noted that she had not taken her eyes from his.

He took a step back from her, breathing in the cool air of the evening, his emotions responding immediately to the calming sensations of the wind and woods. Anger withdrew, coiling back into him, resting, waiting for an appropriate time to unleash his power. His hands unclenched, the indentations on the palms of his skin healing, white light glowing dully.

"I was not, Miss Higurashi. I was simply implying how pressing our situation has become. Again."

Kagome shook her head, "I don't know what I did." The girl bent down and touched the sword, the mist immediately swirling around her. She wrapped her hands around the hilt, preparing to lift it, her words barely audible to his ears.

"Let me lift you."

Taisho watched, straight faced, as the girl easily hoisted the sword off the ground.

He turned on his heel and stalked away; too overcome with his fury to deal with the dastardly horrendous situation he had been thrown into once again. However, before he could take another step, the sound of a surprised gasp met his ears. He glanced at Kagome and saw her eyes flutter shut, her legs crumpling beneath her. Dashing forward, he caught her before she plummeted to the ground.

The mist pouring off of the sword wrapped around the man and the girl, filling the entire dojo, spilling out into the forest, reaching upwards toward the sky, as if it meant to blot out the very sun.

* * *

_Thanks again, and so sorry for the delay, it was out of my control. Thanks for reading and reviewing! _


	14. Shadow of a Man

_All I can say is : enter the bad guy. And thanks for reading and reviewing! _

* * *

**Chapter 14**

**Shadow of a Man**

The echo of laughter tumbled around her. It faded in and out, loud one moment, soft and distant the next. She struggled to concentrate, but she could not breathe. There was something wrapped around her neck, squeezing out both her thoughts and her air.

There were noises all around, the sounds of difficult breathing, gasps of pain. And above the panting she could hear the low, taunting cackle of laughter. There was a familiar presence next to her, a warm hand on hers. Struggling to understand, she tried to open her eyes, eyelashes fluttering with the effort. But all she could see was blurs of color. Suddenly, without any warning, she was thrust forward, falling. Her eyes shot open at the shift in her balance.

A scream tore from her throat as she plummeted through the clouds, the land below rushing to meet her. Her brain registered the green rolling hills, swaying with high grass, so bright that, for a moment, she thought she was staring into the green of her own eyes. A forceful gale pushed upward, slowing her fall, catching her. She was gently lowered to hills below, placed carefully on her feet.

Kagome shivered from the moment of pure adrenaline. The wind continued to howl around her, over the grass that danced around her hips, tumbling along the tops of the hills. Looking up, she saw the strange hue of the thunderheads through which she had fallen, dark amethyst mixed with grey. Flashes of subdued lightning coursed deep within the dark mass, sparks of electricity flashing in a hundred places all at once, throughout the dark pockets of hidden moisture.

The girl turned in a slow circle, her eyes scanning her surroundings.

She was standing at the bottom of a conglomeration of large rolling hills, in the middle of an empty, undulating plain. Although she could not see them, she could sense the presence of mountains in the distance and the ground whispered the existence of a forest where the plains ended, many miles behind her, over the turbulent land. The salty tears of the sea wafted over the wind, the taste of open water tickling her taste buds.

But her path was not meant to wander through the woodlands or the peaks or the lapping ocean waves. Her body began to move of its own accord, her feet taking slow, halting steps, parting the long grass, to carry her up and over the hill before her.

She waded through the vegetation as if she were trawling through water, movements sluggish. Kagome could feel a strong presence somewhere ahead of her, calling out in desperation.

Her steps quickened, and she broke into a run, a feeling of urgency taking root in her stomach, clenching uncomfortably. As she crested the rise, her vision shifted without warning, and she found herself in a heavily wooded area, no longer surrounded by the hilly plains. Before her, through the break in the tree line, she could see the rough face of a rocky outcropping.

Darting out into the open, she peered upwards.

It was a large, long cliff, separating the lower forest from the upper. Through the bright sunrays, she could barely make out the foliage spilling over the top of the cliff, leaves and limbs dancing in the wind. Glancing around, she saw a well-worn path, leading east. And just as she sensed the presence of mountains, sea, and the forest, she knew, somehow, that the path lead to a small village; humanity was not far from where she stood. A sign of movement high above pulled her attention away from the path.

Her eyes narrowed as she saw pieces of rock dislodge from the cliff top and plummet, landing with loud cracks that nearly split the air in two, the stones breaking with the force of the impact.

Kagome could see dark shadows moving, the flashes of bright light amongst the dark foliage. And then, something large was pitched over the side of the cliff, rocketing toward the ground. The girl tried to discern what the falling object was, but her vision was already blurring from the sunlight, the merging of colors alerting her to the changing scenery within her vision.

When her eyes cleared, she was once again at the bottom of the cliff face, but the natural scene before her had changed significantly.

Years of erosion and weathering had worn away much of the rock, stone, and mud. The bottom of the straight incline was littered with boulders and felled trees. The face of the outcropping was pocked with holes and indentions, small cracks and caves.

It was raining, sheets of icy water pouring down onto her skin. She looked over her body. She could feel the cool moisture, but her skin and clothes remained dry.

An annoyingly well-known hum filled her head and ears, a glittering of light catching her eyes to draw her gaze halfway up the cliff face.

Kagome weaved around the large obstacles, halting at the bottom of the cliff. Squinting her eyes, peering through the hazy rain, she could barely make out a shinning crack in the grey stone. And there, where the rock was split, a heavy grey mist spilled out, dancing on the air, descending to hover around her body.

The girl raised her hand, wafting the air, disturbing the mist. She smiled as the cool, damp sensation tingled around her fingers.

"So, this is the Shikon site."

As if to respond, the mist darkened and wrapped her entirely within itself, hiding her away from the world.

* * *

Aeron ripped open the sliding drawer, nearly wrenching it off its track. His large hands clumsily thumbed through the manila folders, searching frantically.

_Taisho._

The name on the file tab flashed before his eyes. He grinned, triumphant. Pulling the folder out he ran over to his desk, sitting down in the chair with such a force that he propelled himself across the office and into a wall.

He kept forgetting he had exchanged his old, stationary chair for one with wheels. Apparently, his accounting colleague had found his abrupt movements, mostly his standing at sitting, which manifested in the grating of the chair legs across the floor, to be highly distracting.

He could not believe the woman was so uptight that she lost count of her numbers whenever he moved his seat. However, she was, and to appease her, he had switched out his chair for a different, less noisy one. And now, as a result, he was even more disruptive.

Every time he sat down, he went rolling around the office.

Aeron propelled himself back over to the desk, opening the folder with shaking hands. The eyes behind his glasses darted over the page, his brow furrowing.

Quickly, he sifted through the stack of papers on his desk, his eyes falling on a note with his handwriting scrawled across it. Picking up the phone, he dialed the number written on the bottom of the crumpled piece of paper.

"Pick up. Come, on, Kagome, pick up the phone."

His leg jostled up and down, free hand drumming its fingers on the desk.

Kagome's voice filled the earpiece. He cursed under his breath. It was the answering machine.

Again.

He waited impatiently for the message to end, and when the high-pitched sound reached his ears, he barreled forward, his words tripping over themselves.

"Kagome, It's Aeron Michaels. I found your number in your financial file. Sorry, I know that probably wasn't very polite. But, that's beside the point. Two reasons for my call, one: you never picked up your paycheck and I thought Taisho had kidnapped you, and two; I found some information that might be useful to you. After you told me about Taisho's legend, I did a little research of my own.

I have a friend who teaches Japanese history and I asked him to help me find out if any part of that legend was true. And, well," he laughed, running a hand over his face, " He didn't know anything about a mythic blade, or demon, or a war in western Japan, but, I looked up Taisho's name in our file. He simply goes by Taisho. There was no other name that he might be referred to by. But, I found, in one of my friend's history books, a mention of a man, a legendary warrior from the northwestern part of Japan. His story was part of a local history or legend; in every other text we looked through we couldn't find any mention of him. But, Kagome, his name-"

The answering machine stopped, and Aeron faltered, pulling the phone away from his ear to stare at it in suspicious disbelief. He swallowed, throat suddenly dry. Slowly, haltingly, as if he were fighting an inner battle, the accountant placed the phone in the cradle. His brow furrowed, and his hands came to rest on the sides of his face. Dark, worried eyes stared down at the name scrawled on the paper.

His head began to pound as the name danced across the page, taunting him. And, the young accountant found, for reasons he could not name, he was unable to bring himself to utter the name out loud.

"What have you gotten yourself into, Kagome?" He murmured, closing his eyes, willing the appellation on the paper to disappear, to have never wandered into his life.

He stood abruptly, the chair once again rolling the length of the office floor, but this time, he made no move to bring it back. Shrugging on his jacket, he grabbed the piece of paper, and hurried out of the office, out of the museum, and into the never-ending rain.

* * *

Taisho was having a bad week.

He had gained his sword, which consequently meant he had also gained a stubborn girl and her territorial dog. He had been attacked not once, not twice, but multiple times. He had been stabbed with a blade and shot in the shoulder with an arrow, and more recently, slapped across the face. He had lost control of his powers, lost his temper, and to top it all off, had once again lost the sword.

Although, strangely, his fluctuating power had not deserted him, which he would have expected, given at that particular moment he could not touch the blade.

But, no, his unmanageable power still hovered around him, still infuriatingly difficult to control, still refusing to join with his soul.

Only the sword was different.

It was currently humming in the hands of the girl, lying limp in his arms.

Her dark brows twitched, mouth working its way in and out of a frown, her eyes moving back and forth across closed eyelids. The mist from the sword had grown increasingly darker and there were sparks of white light tumbling within the magical essence crackling over his skin wherever the mist happened to touch him.

He sighed heavily, feeling exhausted. Whatever the sword was doing required an immense amount of both his and the weapon's power.

The girl whispered something and he leaned his head down to listen to her quiet words, hoping she would come out of her trance soon so he could return to his fury and demand that she re-instate him as the master of the blade. But, the more he thought about the consequences of that potential action, the less appealing it seemed.

He decided, in that moment, that until his arm was fully healed, and his strength returned to a kind of normalcy, he could not continue to fight with her. It would be detrimental to them both. They were already facing off against the world. He doubted they would have the stamina nor the desire to argue day in and day out.

At least, he hoped not.

Her voice became stronger, and he moved as close as he could, her breath tickling the skin of his neck.

His brows furrowed as she spoke.

"Shikon."

He let out a sigh, and it whistled through his clenched teeth, exasperated.

Damn it to the depths of hell.

His fixed frown deepened, his disapproving face reflecting back at him from the metal of the sword. So, the weapon was going to fill in the blanks for her.

Taisho bared his teeth in a feral snarl, furious with the blade.

_Apparently_, the priestess had been right. _Apparently_, the sword would not let Taisho keep the girl in the dark. And _apparently_, being the Protector of the sword entailed more than he had ever imagined.

In his arms, Kagome shifted, a low moan reverberating in her chest. When her eyes opened, he could see the hazy confusion within, but it left quickly, her sharp mind clearing away the remnants of the vision.

Kagome blinked once and looked down at the sword in her hands.

"Well, that was interesting."

Taisho stood, bringing the girl up with him, righting her on her feet. "What did you see?"

She held the sword up before her eyes, examining it as the mist slowly crawled back into the blade.

Her answer was simple, "The Shikon site." She looked up at him, and made to hand him the sword. "Take it." Taisho did not move. He stared at the girl, disbelieving, wondering if she was toying with him. "Take it, Taisho."

Taisho reached, slowly, his gaze trained on her face. Feeling the warmth of her hand, he wrapped his fingers around hers, gripping firmly. She slowly disentangled her fingers, withdrawing her hand, leaving him with the blade.

Taisho's eyes flew to the weapon. It sat calmly within his grasp, as if it had never used its power against him.

"How did you-"

She shrugged, "I don't know. I suppose you aren't the only one who doesn't have all the answers." Seeing the ominous cloud building behind him, she sighed, "It was a feeling. Besides it's your sword anyway. I've given up questioning all of the events surrounding our predicament, especially those that involve innate abilities of comprehension that seem to stem from the blade. I think perhaps, some things we may just have to accept." The look on her face showed that her words were selected carefully, ironic in their intent and her seemingly disinterested air drove him over the edge.

Taisho viciously sheathed the sword, nearly cutting himself in the process. Kagome raised disapproving eyebrows. "I do not simply accept things as they are. I desire explanations and answers."

The girl bent down and hugged Ajax, who had been patiently waiting for their strange interactions to cease.

"Well, now you know how I feel." She met his golden gaze, unfazed by the anger in his voice. "I think the sword wanted me to know about the site. You refused to tell me about it, so it showed me instead. Once that was accomplished there was no reason why you shouldn't have your blade back. It makes sense to me, anyway."

Taisho said nothing, too furious to respond; instead, he turned and strode down the steps and out of sight, leaving Kagome alone with her thoughts.

* * *

She loved the rain.

Usually.

However, Kagome could not help but wonder if the constant downpour they were experiencing would leave them with something akin to a biblical flood. The rain hadn't ceased in the past five days. She would have asked Taisho if such copious amounts of rainfall was a normal occurrence for Japan's spring season, but, whether it was fortunate or not, the man was not speaking to her.

He had not left the mansion since their interaction in the dojo. He had existed behind closed doors, avoiding her altogether.

"He's sulking, Ajax," she said, as she flipped through the books stacked up on the table. The dog, lying on her feet, simply sighed.

She was in the library again, researching… or attempting to. She was not getting very far. She had a sneaking suspicion that Taisho had removed all books that might have given her any further clues about the mystery surrounding the Shikon site.

She did not understand his desire to keep her clueless. Especially since the sword had shown her what Taisho would not. Not that the vision had helped her much, but it had been more forthright than the man had, and for that was grateful.

Kagome let out an exasperated moan and lowered her forehead to rest on the cool mahogany tabletop. Covering her eyes with her hands she listened, with both her ears and her mind. There was nothing but a dull hum, the closest thing to silence she had experienced in days.

The sword had been quiet since she had woken from her vision. The vibration on her skin and within her thoughts had receded; it was now but a tingle along her spine, more comforting and natural than the blaring and annoying reminder she had possessed before. Also, she had noted with some interest, she could no longer feel Taisho. The vague blurs of images, the innate feeling of him had disappeared, leaving her to wonder if she had imagined their connection from the beginning.

She sat up and looked out the window, gazing at the desolate rain, feeling lonely and bored. Kagome shifted her feet and Ajax moved. She stood, stretching, puzzling over the man's self-induced solitary confinement.

Suddenly, tired of her own isolated existence, she turned to her dog. "Ajax, go find Taisho." The dog cocked its head at his mistress, bright amber eyes twinkling. "Go on!"

The corgi turned and bolted out of the library, and Kagome trailed behind the dog at an easy pace. She was too impatient for her own good, she thought, somewhat bemused by her sudden impulsive actions.

As she followed her furry companion, she wondered if she and the billionaire would ever be able to tolerate each other. She did not like to admit it, but it was disconcerting to be at odds with someone all the time. She was not accustomed to it. Normally, by now, one party had deferred to the other, and someone learned a lesson in the process.

Normally.

But, it was quite obvious that neither she nor Taisho were going to give in. Neither the man nor the girl felt they had any lessons to learn. Not from each other anyway.

Kagome paused in her thoughts as Ajax led her into a part of the manor she had never seen before. Ahead of her, two large wooden doors stood open, and from what she could see, it seemed to be a huge expanse of an open room. The corgi disappeared into the room and Kagome grimaced as she felt the air take on an electric quality.

Perhaps she should have waited for Taisho to come to her.

"Miss Higurashi."

His voice could have made a grown man cower. It echoed out through the doors, setting her teeth on edge, nearly making the windows shake with its volume. But lucky for Kagome, she was not a man, and she did not find it necessary to worry about his attitude toward either she or her dog.

She jogged the last few steps and skidded through the open doors, her jaw dropping as her eyes landed on the sights before her.

The room was enormous. High ceilings were dotted with crystalline and gold gilded chandeliers, casting eerie circular pools of light onto a mammoth carpet. The intricately woven rug was nearly the size of the entire wooden floor, deep reds, whites, blues, and yellows fusing together to create a tapestry for the feet to wander over. Wide windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling were lined, one next to another, along the farthest wall, cracked open, allowing the sweet smell of the wind and rain into the room.

Taisho stood in the middle of the room, Ajax making himself comfortable on the warrior's feet. The man looked up from the dog and met her gaze, eyes flashing with warning.

Kagome would have laughed had she not been rendered speechless.

He held two swords, one in each hand. His shoulders were tense, upper body bare to the cool breeze in the room, shirt discarded to the floor. His breath was ragged and beads of sweat rolled down his temples, matting his hair to his face.

Her faltering mind supplied the answer.

Indoor dojo.

For a moment, her eyes trailed over his physique. She had not needed to see a shirtless Taisho to know he was in excellent physical condition. But, she thought, amused by her own inner thought process, now she knew without a doubt, that his attractive attributes extended beyond his unusually handsome face.

Taisho caught her wandering eyes and she saw him smile beneath the wayward strands of silver hair. Inwardly, she cringed. It was her own fault if his ego inflated, swelled with pride, and caused a chain reaction that reverted him back to the smug man she knew he was entirely capable of being. She sighed, wishing she had never entered the room.

"Lose something?" He asked, his breath heavy under the words.

Kagome smiled nervously, looking everywhere in the room but at him, "I did. Sorry."

Taisho shifted his feet, attempting to prod Ajax into moving, but the corgi gave no intention of doing so. Taisho sighed and tried again, this time, attempting to remove his feet from underneath the stocky dog, which was, Kagome thought, a silly thing for him to do. Obviously Ajax was not going to move.

Taisho ended up stumbling out from under the dog, nearly falling onto his face with the effort of disentangling himself.

"I am going to regret ever bringing that mutt here," the man muttered as he walked over to the girl.

"You don't already?"

Taisho grimaced, "Do not tempt me. I can fly him back to whatever circle of hell he came from, Miss Higurashi."

"Ajax is not a denizen of hell," she responded reproachfully. Taisho merely frowned. Kagome returned her gaze to the strange room they were in. "This is interesting." She waved her hand at the chandeliers above them, swaying slightly from the gentle outside breeze.

"It was designed to be an elaborate dinning hall of sorts. I found that it more adequately suited that of a training area. I do not receive guests and if I did, I would still deem it necessary to hone my skills so that when the uninvited came to my door, I would be sure to kill them with a single blow, and not ruin my immaculate carpet with extra sword swipes, which always lead to extra, unnecessary bloodshed."

Kagome would have thought it a joke had she not already experienced Taisho's social interactions. Recalling his interaction with the museum curator, she hid a complacent smile. There was nothing quite like watching someone receive their come-up-ins and Dr. Wesley's would live forever in her memory.

The man suddenly flipped one of the blades around, gesturing for her to take it by the hilt. Kagome cast him a questioning look, but he simply held the weapon closer. Hesitantly, she reached for the sword, her fingers curling around the hilt, brushing against his. When he was sure she had it within her grasp, he removed his hand, and she took a moment to readjust her fingers. Finally, after the weapon fit comfortably within her hands, she raised the blade before her face.

Taisho sheathed his second sword, the one that tested him, the one she knew all too well. Reaching out, he ran a long finger along the straight edge of the blade she held. It was thinner than his other, slimmer, lighter, and easier to handle. For a moment, Kagome's attention was drawn to Taisho's finger, devoid of the strange, sharp nails he had possessed merely a few days ago. Her thoughts were derailed by his words, jostling her to attention.

"This was given to me by my father and his father before that. The forefather that first wielded the blade dubbed it Daichi-sama. It is not a remarkable blade past its durability. It is strong, well made, and cuts through almost anything in its path." Kagome removed her eyes from the blade and looked up at Taisho, his speech jarring her into an uncomfortable apprehension. His smile was grim, and she understood, by his words and approving gaze, how he cherished and admired the forged metal of his ancestors. "Daichi simply means first son, or greatest son. This blade will remain forever within my family, as it was not made to choose its master." He carefully withdrew the sword from her grasp.

"You have family then?" She asked, suddenly curious.

Taisho pulled out the other sword, ignoring her question, sheathing Daichi-sama as he placed the hilt of his more precious sword in her hands.

"Do not lighten the blade."

She laughed, "Taisho, I can't lift the sword otherwise." He waited, studying her face. Sighing, she nodded, "Alright, but if anything happens to it, I am not paying for the damages."

"This sword can withstand more than a drop from clumsy hands."

She scowled at him but, not wishing to start another argument, let her sharp words die on her tongue.

Holding onto the hilt of the blade, she immediately felt the difference in weight between the two weapons. Taisho kept a hand on the hilt, just above hers, helping her hold the sword aloft, vividly reminding her of the first time she had attempted to hold the blade. An unwanted flush crept over her face, and she quickly pushed the memory of Taisho's arms around her out of her mind.

"I recall you asking what the name of this weapon was. This blade was never given a title. I knew that any appellation that I chose for it would not fit. It is an object with its own mind, and it should choose its name accordingly. But the blade never divulged its name to me. For all that I know it does not have one." He directed her eyes to the curve of the metal, "It is modeled after a katana, but its width is wider than a soldier's traditional blade. This makes the weapon, even without its spells and wards, more difficult to handle and master. Also, as we have previously discussed, the circular piece that is missing from the metal is meant to channel magic. The sorcery would be forced through the blade here," he pointed to the area, near the tip of the blade, his index finger moving around the circle, "combining with the magic of the sword, and the spell would be a powerful merging between the two."

Kagome nodded, but her thoughts did not linger on his words. "I see." Taisho noticed her distraction, a shadow descending over his face. Kagome craned her neck to look up at him. She opened her mouth to ask him again, to ask if even he, the being that he was, had a family.

"I will answer your questions to the best of my abilities, Miss Higurashi. But, I will answer them in my own time. This is both because I am a private man and because I trust very few. To speak candidly is not in my nature. But, I will try and provide answers nonetheless. However, today is not the day for inquiries of that sort." He removed the weapon from her hands, but he was not angry, his tone was not short or caustic.

When both blades were secured in the sheaths at his hip, he walked toward the exit of the room, beckoning her to accompany him.

Her eyes trailed to his back, where she saw faint, shadowy outlines, reminding her of the marks she had once seen on his face. She blinked, and when she narrowed her eyes, she saw nothing but the smooth expanse of his skin.

"Was there a reason you were telling me about the weapon?" She asked him, her gaze glued to his back.

"We will be leaving tomorrow."

Kagome hardly contained her gasp of surprise, her former study forgotten. The man had more shifting moods than there were grains of sand on a beach. He had avoided her for days, and now, suddenly, he was answering her questions and they were up and leaving.

"Where? Where are we going?"

She quickened her pace to match his long stride, Ajax bounding after them. When Taisho did not immediately respond, Kagome ran in front of him, and began to walk backwards, keeping her eyes trained on his face. Taisho's eyebrows rose, and she was sure he was waiting for her to run into something, someone, to trip over her own feet.

She watched him fight away the smile that threatened to break his reserve. "Where else? The Shikon site."

As if he knew what his words would cause her treacherous body to do, he had already reached out, hands wrapping around her arms, keeping her from tumbling as her feet snagged on the rug, gravity pulling her backwards.

He hauled her upright, overcompensating. Later, she would wonder if he had done it on purpose, pulling her close to him.

The nervous butterflies that she had captured and bottled, stored away where Taisho couldn't see the effects they had on her, were released, all at once, to tumble around inside, bringing back her inability to reason, to speak, to look him in the eyes.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. _Damn it_.

She could feel Taisho's smile. He knew how to get to her.

She wiggled out of his grasp. "Right. The Shikon site. Tomorrow you say?"

"Yes."

She shifted nervously, eyes averted. "Any particular reason why?"

Taisho moved. She found him, quite suddenly, in her face, his head to one side, practically bending in half to be at eye level with her.

"Because you saw a vision of the site. Because I do not have a better way to begin my attempts of controlling the sword. Because, perhaps, there is something to this 'research' of yours."

He straightened and the smug satisfaction that he resonated was so thick, it was nearly palpable. She wished, right then, at that moment, that she knew how to better handle such situations. Although, she admitted, it was difficult to learn to handle them when she avoided them at all costs.

Kagome could handle men… as long as they were platonic enough to be a brother, or they infuriated her beyond reasonable comprehension. Taisho fit into neither of those categories. _And_ he had figured out her weakness.

No, that was wrong. He hadn't figured it out, he had always known.

Taisho brushed past, barely coming in contact with her, but somehow still managing to knock her off balance. Embarrassed, angry with herself, she could do nothing but watch him saunter down the hall, swords at his waist, shoulders held straight and proud, a warrior among men. And as he walked away, she could have sworn she heard him chuckle, but the pleasant sound became nothing more than a figment of her imagination, lost in her confusion and doubt.

* * *

Taisho sat, hunched over in the chair, elbows balanced on his knees, large hands folded over his mouth, staring into the darkness.

He did not wish to leave the safety of his lands so soon after his injury, so soon after he had lost control over his power. It was still fluctuating, barely in control.

He was vulnerable. Even more so than when he had lost most of his power. At least, even while weak, he had a measure of control.

His enemy's spies knew that he was vulnerable. They would attempt to take advantage of his state, attempt to wrest the girl and the sword from his grasp.

He growled under his breath, unconsciously calling forth his power, translucent wisps of white light swirling around his body.

He could not think of a way to keep Kagome out of harm's way.

She was seeing visions. She was his guide to his power, to the defeat of the demon.

The sword would have it no other way.

He had not thought this would be his future. He had made an assumption; he had overestimated his own abilities. His pride had clouded his reasoning. And now, as a result, he was fumbling to come up with a plan of his own, one that did not follow the whims of a decidedly animated inanimate object.

But he was getting nowhere.

He sighed, expelling the last of his energy, the power that had been crawling over his body slowly sinking back inside, to churn endlessly, a constant reminder of his troubles.

Hopefully, if he followed the girl's visions, they would ultimately lead him to his end, the demon's demise, the completion of what he had not finished so many centuries before. Taisho ran a hand over his face, pressing the darkness into his eyes.

He could only hope that their trip would be worth the danger he would be placing them in.

* * *

Kagome peered through the dancing leaves of the bowed tree, watching the archaeologists as best she could, with all the heavy underbrush and tree limbs blocking her way. Taisho had opted to leave his home by the cover of early morning, and hidden in the dark, they had begun their long drive to the site. He had taken them over back roads, protected by ancient spirits and deities. Kagome did not need to ask him why he was so cautious. She could see it on his face.

It was the demon.

He hid his apprehension well. And, in truth, Kagome wasn't sure if Taisho was capable of being unsettled, but she could understand his loathing of their situation, his desire to take precautions. He couldn't control the events as he saw fit, and as a result, he was in danger.

Kagome had silently vowed to help him more. She had been selfish and childish, angry with him for his lack of direct answers. He still vexed her, and she still thought that she deserved the truth, but she had decided that even if some of her questions remained unanswered, she had an obligation to help the man.

After all, if what Taisho said was true, the very world rested on their shoulders.

And she had no reason to doubt his word.

They had come across a village several miles from the site. There, they had left the vehicle that had brought them to the spot, hidden from view. The man and the girl had made their way, quietly and with the utmost care, to the outskirts of the site, hidden amongst the shadows and the trees. When they were within several hundred feet, Taisho had stopped, and pulled her under the bowed branches of an old tree, mentioning something about the tree's protective power. By the look on the man's face, she could see he did not wish to answer any questions. So, she stood silently, musing over the possibilities of a protective tree.

Her thoughts were interrupted when a large hand descended to her shoulder, the sudden contact reminding her of their argument in the dojo. As if he could read her thoughts, Taisho removed his hand, which was more than she expected him to do. But he remained close, and whether it was her heightened senses, or her general understanding and perception of the man, she knew he was standing behind her, a threat in his eyes, power swimming in his tense muscles. Kagome did not need to turn around to know that he had placed a hand on Daichi-sama's hilt, his other, unnamed weapon strapped to his back.

He was on edge. She could not blame him; there was a strange energy about the place, one that seeped through the ground, over the roots, and into the very trees.

"Magic," Taisho murmured from behind her, "this area brims with it. Can you feel it?"

She nodded, reaching a hand out to touch the leaves of the tree. She felt a tingling sensation there, a strange warmth that reminded her of Taisho's healing power. It was odd, but not unpleasant.

Taisho's arm appeared over her shoulder, his hand grasping hers, pulling curious fingers away from their study of nature. When she looked up at him, he offered neither a smile nor a gesture of comfort, and she quickly withdrew her hand, unnerved by his seriousness.

"I should have known this was where the sword would appear."

She turned around to peer up at his stoic countenance. There was an emotion therein that she had not seen before. He seemed almost wistful, his eyes trained on the cliff face, barley visible from where they stood.

"What do you mean?"

Taisho sighed, and removed his hand from Daichi-sama's hilt. "This was the place where I found the last jewel fragment."

Kagome thought back, recalling his story. It seemed ages ago that she had sat in the restaurant, listening to his odd tale. "The jewel that the demon corrupted after he failed to steal your sword?"

"Yes. I was nearing the completion of my half of the jewel; I had hunted down multiple servants of the demon, Onigumo, all of which possessed shards of the magical jewel. There was a spirit that resided in these woods, it had sold its soul to gain the power of the gem, aligning itself with the demon." Taisho glanced down at her, face unreadable. "The spirit was worshipped by the people of the nearby villages. When its power increased and turned malevolent they learned to fear it. The spirit demanded sacrifices and offerings. It tormented the villagers until the day I arrived. I fought with the tainted being and took back the jewel shard, the last piece of my half." Kagome recalled her vision, the dark forms fighting at the top of the cliff. "You asked me what Shikon meant."

"I did," she murmured quietly.

"Those who discovered this site named it for the legend surrounding the tainted spirit. They misinterpreted the tale. The legend speaks of a creature that existed within the borders of the village, a creature that was called 'Shikon'. This is incorrect. The creature's name was not Shikon, rather, the jewel fragment that the creature carried was a shard of a jewel and was called-"

"Shikon," her voice whispered of its own accord, hoarse and weak.

Taisho parted the leaves and narrowed his eyes, watching the movements of the people at the site. "Shikon no Tama. It was created to embody four admirable characteristics of Shinto, important attributes for a follower to possess. The traits, or souls, as they are called by the faith, are courage, friendship, wisdom, and love. And as I told you before, the jewel can either be used for good or evil. Evil also knows of these four parts of life, and can use them accordingly, twisting them to become something other, tainting the jewel in the process."

The girl frowned, and her fingernails found their way into her mouth. She chewed absently, staring at the ground. "Are the sword and the jewel connected?"

"In a way," he replied, turning his attention back on her. "Perhaps they were always connected. By their creation both objects were meant to help the bearer defeat his enemies, preferably those that are evil and malicious. But, perhaps, inadvertently, the mage, the forger, and myself, connected the objects when we sealed away the demon. In any case, both are tied into my past and future."

Above them, dark clouds had begun to amass, the wind beginning to whistle through the trees. Taisho's brow darkened, and Kagome could almost feel his hackles rise. "It seems that we are in the way of some unfortunate weather."

A shout went up from the site, a warning of the coming storm. The man and the girl hid within the shadows, watching the archaeologists, rushing franticly, trying to cover their precious excavations. Kagome heard the hum of old vehicles, dust covered, filled with tools, fading into the wind, as they transported tired students, professors, and archaeologists back to the village to wait out the storm.

They waited, listening to the quiet of the woods, and Kagome thought she heard the whispering of voices, laughing through the leaves. The thought did not frighten her, but it did set her unease, and, as much as she did not wish to look to Taisho for comfort, she found herself unconsciously moving nearer to him.

She waited for Taisho to signal their safety, after his assessment of the area was complete. He held back the branches of the tree and she stepped out into the forest, intent on the site before them, just through the break in the foliage. When they reached the open site, Taisho took in a quick reconnaissance of the area, his senses sweeping in every direction at once, an unconscious bloom of power reverberating off of his body.

Kagome took a moment to gaze at the site before her. It appeared very different from the vision the sword had given her. With the shovels, the sills to funnel dirt, the pits of layered stratigraphy, she hardly recognized the area. But the cliff face that jutted upwards, a hundred feet or more, pocked with cracks and caves, emitted a familiar wellspring of comforting power. She wondered if this was where the sword had gathered its personality. There was a quiet magnificence of the place, a natural strength of the land that seemed to manifest itself in the very rock.

She looked a question at the man and Taisho nodded to her. She walked forward, attention on the staggering cliff. Taisho let her maneuver through the site, and she trusted that he would warn her if any danger appeared, and so she continued forward, until her cold hands met the jagged edges of the precipice.

As sensitive fingertips ran over sharp stone, she felt the rumble of the earth, a safe warmth enveloping her senses, reminding her that she was protected. Two weeks earlier she would have been frightened of the feeling, but instead, she found herself smiling, listening to a hum that was both familiar and foreign, reminding her of Taisho's sword, all the while telling her that she had never felt this particular presence before.

She ran her admiring fingers up the cool roughness, nearly losing herself in her introverted thoughts, her gaze traveling upward, quickly finding the crevice that the sword had shown her in the vision, one amongst many, nearly fifty feet up the cliff. Kagome stood on the tips of her toes, as if doing so would give her a better view.

Her angle of sight was a difficult one, but she was not sure the crevice could be seen from anywhere else. She began to wonder how someone could have stumbled upon the weapon, located at inhuman heights, lodged in a place it should not have been.

Not tearing her eyes from the crack, she called over her shoulder to the man, "Did you happen to speak to the site director about the peculiarities of the sword's discovery?"

Behind her, some distance away, Taisho was inspecting an open pit, his eyes narrowed in examination. Above him, the clouds became dark as the storm moved over the land.

"I believe a local saw something glittering in the cliff face."

Kagome shook her head and placed her hands on her hips, thinking. "I don't see how that could have happened. The crevice is only visible from here, where I am standing, and if my vision is any indication, no part of that sword was visible outside the crevice."

Taisho crouched down next to the hole, his hand extended, white light filtering into the carefully dug area. "Visions do not always give an exact truth. They often only show an outline of an event, not necessarily a truthful actuality. Perhaps the sword wanted to be found. After all, it did travel across an ocean to find you. Why would it not throw itself down a cliff face or glow a little brighter, simply to catch the attention of someone who could set the wheels in motion?"

Kagome nodded absently. His words rang true, but somehow, she could not shake the feeling that there was more to the discovery of the sword than either she or Taisho knew of. The man, crouched at the pit, suddenly stiffened. He moved quickly, dropping into the excavation area, leaving Kagome above ground, with the wind and the rain.

* * *

Taisho stared at the earthen wall, the layers of strata folding one on top of the other, revealing the shift in the earth over many hundreds of years. The tips of calloused fingertips began to glow with magic, and he brought his hand up to the damp clay, affording him both light, and the probing of his magic, searching for the taint that set the land in an uneasy churn.

There.

Taisho leaned closer, his fingers passing over a mud-covered object. A spark of angry, fiery animosity abruptly flared before his face, and the man drew back, throwing up his forearm and a protective barrier in case the object was encased with a magic ward. Upon the sudden emergence of power, Taisho felt a warning lodge in his gut. He did not need to look twice to know what the object was.

The last remnant of the spirit he had fought, once, many years ago, on the cliff towering above them.

The wind began to howl, and Taisho felt the innate shifting of the world around him, the sign of the other, the sign of the corrupt, a sign of the demonic.

He had known it would be risky to travel outside his barriers and lands, but he had also known that it was inevitable. He could not stay behind his walls forever, and it seemed he could not even keep the girl safe behind his gates, given the appearance of the demon's spies. To follow the will of the sword was to walk in peril. Taisho knew, better than any being, what the cost of his fight was, and he knew, that if he did not risk his safety now, all would be lost in the end.

Hauling himself out of the hole, he assured himself that Kagome was still within his sight. She was not far, wandering the bottom of the cliff, her brows furrowed.

"Miss Higurashi," he called her name into the wind, and she turned, startled by his sudden shout. "We must leave."

The girl cast one more look at the cliff before she made her way toward him. He extended his hand and she glanced at it, confused. Impatient, he grasped her fingers in his. Thunder cracked above them, threatening to rend the sky in two. The sudden pull at his hand made him turn, and the force of the wind nearly knocked him off his feet. The origin of the power drew his eyes upward, where they landed on the very tip of the cliff's edge.

Against the dark shadows of the cliff, the twisting limbs of the foliage, there was the shape of a man, translucent and elemental, but the shape of a man nonetheless. Taisho snarled, the being had been cloaked by the incessant, shriek of the wind, a brute force that was threatening to blow them off of their feet. Against the flashes of lightning, they could see a dark kimono, flapping in the wind, and brilliant eyes, flashing within a hidden face.

Taisho pulled Kagome closer to him. "I meant what I said, Miss Higurashi, I will protect you."

She did not need to say anything to convey her thoughts.

She had trusted his word and he had an obligation to fulfill.

They both did.

They bolted, weaving around the trenches and pits, heading for the wood. Behind them, the eerie gale force continued to wail, licking at their backs.

So, Taisho thought, grimly, expanding his senses, they had decided to ambush him. An evil wind spirit at his back, and masked presence before him, he would have little choice but to fight.

Sprinting into the forest, Taisho felt the weak surge of nature, holding its own against the tainted element of the wind, momentarily stalling the being where the forest floor and foliage had grown thick, the pure essence of the natural and elemental world protesting the twisted nature of the wind.

Taisho saw the bowed tree, a haven from a forgotten time. Intent on securing Kagome within the sorrowful branches, he pulled, almost dragging her, silently willing her feet to move.

Her small hand suddenly slipped from his, and his immediate reaction was to turn and grab for her. But he was frozen, a tingling sensation beginning to thread through his veins, soon to become an excruciating warning. Through the dark swaying thickets of the wood, a tall shadow began to take form, walking slowly, carelessly, the second of their enemies. Taisho's brilliant eyes narrowed, his spectacular eyesight tunneling, focusing on the being, just beginning to emerge within his range of feeling, coming closer with each unhurried step.

He cursed his power. If he had not needed to subdue it, he would have sensed the threat much sooner.

A hand wrapped around his forearm, but it was nothing but a stray touch, a thought he quickly brushed away. Minutes passed, and through the swaying trees, the shadow of a man finally emerged, a glittering smile on his hidden face. Taisho pushed Kagome behind him, unsheathing both his swords smoothly, without a care, as regal and stoic as he had ever been.

The inconstant light of the storm shifted, darkening, the trees bending to the wind and the calls of the spirit behind him. The man stepped forward, out into the grey light.

Despite their situation, Taisho's mouth parted in a grim smile.

"Onigumo."

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_Chapter 15 is jam packed full of action. 7 days at most before next update. Hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading and reviewing!_


	15. Sesshoumaru Taisho

_Ooh. early update. I hope to have the next chapter up in the next 3-5 days. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to read and review. I feed off reviews. They make me want to write. I appreciate them. With that request, I leave you to it. I hope you enjoy. I liked writing this chapter. _

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**Chapter 15**

**Sesshoumaru Taisho**

Kagome felt the essence in the forest, her senses warning her of the danger they were headed toward. Her voice refused to work, but her body had answered her call, halting, her hand slipping out of Taisho's. The man did not turn, he did not pull her within his protective grasp, not even when she recovered from her own immobility, and tentatively placed her fingers on his arm, did he move. Every fiber of his being was directed toward the depth of the forest, focused on the figure that soon emerged.

He looked much different than his shell, she thought, the rational part of her mind quickly taking note of their greatest enemy.

He was tall and lean, wider and broader than Taisho, more muscle and weight about his frame. The men were matched in height, in intensity, in proud elegance. But while Taisho was dominant and strong, a man with a level of hidden compassion, one that made him the enigma that he was, the other man before them held all of Taisho's warrior like demeanor, his commanding air, but there, beneath his exterior, was nothing but cold malice. A shiver coursed through her body and she found herself in the icy grips of fear.

His face was calm, a small smile gracing handsome lips, but there was no warmth in the expression, nothing but death and destruction in his dark eyes. Black hair, darker than her own, hung about his shoulders, stray wisps falling around the pale face. He would have been handsome if he were not the destructor, the demon whose sole purpose was to throw the world into chaos.

Taisho had unsheathed his swords, slowly, carefully, upon the approach of the other man. There was no fear in his movements, no hesitation; he simply stood, waiting, a single word falling from his lips.

"Onigumo."

The other man halted his steps, his gaze boring into Taisho's.

"Taisho."

The gale behind them shifted, and Kagome dared to tear her eyes from the demon and look over her shoulder. The force of the wind became solid, morphing into the shape of a man. She turned quickly, pressing her back against Taisho's, her hands flying around to his sides, gripping his shirt in bunches. Upon her frantic touch, Taisho tensed, and an ivory barrier erected itself around them. Kagome belatedly realized it had been in place from the moment Taisho had sensed danger, but he had made it visible for her benefit.

Through the barrier, she watched as the spirit from the cliff face became completely solid, a frightening grin on his face. He was tall, like the other two men, broad and strong, dark hair, clear azure eyes, midnight robes flapping around his frame. He stalked back and forth, like a wild animal, staring at Kagome, trapping her gaze with his own.

The demon lord began to speak again, but Kagome didn't dare to turn her back on the wind spirit.

"It seems we are fated to continue our battle, Taisho, as you did not dispose of me when you last had the chance." Taisho remained silent, the grip on his swords shifting, tightening. "Did you think the seal would last? That I would not regenerate, find an adequate form, my power resurge? You bought the world a few centuries at the loss of your power, and now, you are weak, inadequate. It is a disgrace to your father's name."

"Do not mention my father," Taisho's voice thundered out, shaking the foundations of the cliff, bouncing off the trees and the clay earth. "You mistakenly consider yourself his equal, speaking in such a manner. You, who would sell out his allies, know nothing of honor."

The man laughed quietly, raising the fine hairs on Kagome's arms and neck. She willed her breathing to slow, and attempted to loosen her hold on Taisho.

"You speak of honor as if you possess it, Taisho." The demon paused, and Kagome heard the crunch of leaves under feet. When he spoke again, his voice was closer," You are postponing the inevitable. I will not attempt to bargain with you, I know the nature of your character far too well." Kagome felt Taisho tense, and she watched as the wind spirit began to circle around them, the demon lord suddenly in her line of sight, as the lesser demon disappeared in front of Taisho.

Kagome stood her ground, although all she wanted to do was turn and hide her face in Taisho's back.

"Taisho, allow me to introduce you to the clan leader of the wind spirits, Fujin. I believe you murdered two of his brethren. It seems you are starting out on uneven footing. You should choose your battles more wisely. Two against one never yields a satisfactory fight. But then," he drawled, his dark gaze still holding steady with Kagome's, "You do seem to have a new companion. Although, I still believe the odds would be against you. Miss Higurashi," her name slid over his voice, smooth, eloquent, like silk. She stared into his face, unable to speak. "I see why Taisho is reluctant to let you out of his sight. You are beautiful."

Kagome felt Taisho's voice rumbling in his chest, vibrating through his back, sending intense shivers over her skin. "Do not speak to her," he commanded, the snarl in his voice loud enough to be heard over the thunder.

"Again, Taisho, my offer is not for you. Allow the young woman to make her own decision." His gaze flickered from the back of Taisho's head, down to her face. "Are you sure you are on the right side, Miss Higurashi?"

Kagome swallowed, finding her voice, "The side that doesn't try to kill me? The side that protects me? Yes, I think I am."

Onigumo took a small step forward, and in response, Taisho strengthened his barrier, the air around them hissing with electricity. Taisho's enemy smiled, his dark eyes glittering with malice.

"You need only wait, he will fail in that regard. He will forget you. He will lose control. He protects you now, but when will you be lost to his cause? I can answer that for you, Miss Higurash: As soon as he gains control of his sword, when he no longer needs you. You will die like the first Protector." His smile vanished, and he took another step, Taisho's barrier strengthening in response. "Why not avoid your demise?" He took another step and was now but an arm's length away from her. At the close proximity, Kagome could not help but marvel at his deceptively handsome face. "I do apologize for our first introduction. I seem to have been overly zealous in my attempts to wrest the blade from your grasp."

For the second time since the fateful day the demon's shell had attempted to strangle the life out of her, Kagome felt the phantom fingers gently brush her throat. Taisho moved, sensing the probing grasp of the demon, and suddenly she found herself spun around, facing the wind spirit once more. Fujin's mouth widened, as she laid eyes on him. The spirit reached out, his hands brushing the barrier that separated them. Light sparked where the enemy touched, the smell of smoke wafting to her nose. She held back her grim, triumphant smile as Fujin yanked his hand away from the barrier, snarling at her. Against her back, she felt the deep rumbling of Taisho's words as he spoke again.

"I knew you were deceptive, Onigumo, but, you spoke so frankly of honor, it surprises me that you resort to such flagrant fabrications."

"Deceit?" The demon's voice carried a hint of dark amusement, "It surprises me that you cannot recognize such a flaw within yourself. Tell me, have you told her what you really are? Or did your eloquence and twisted explanations save her from the truth?"

Kagome stiffened at his words, her fear momentarily dispelled by the vague insinuation made by the enemy.

"Miss Higurashi." Taisho's voice was quiet, and through the overpowering elements thundering around them, she almost lost his voice to the howl. "Disregard his words, you cannot trust them."

"I know," she whispered. At her words, she felt a surge of his power, saw the movement of the wind spirit before her, and heard the crackling of a darker strength, flowing from Onigumo.

A strong, familiar arm wrapped itself around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest, an explosive force thundering in her ear, a melding of black and white momentarily blinding her, deafening her, rendering her lost, a tiny vessel afloat a charged sea of powers.

* * *

Taisho wrapped an arm around Kagome, swinging her around to his front, and in the same move, he dropped, brining his barrier with him, the attacks to his side glancing off, merging and exploding around them. The ground bucked under the pressure, large, loose slabs of packed earth heaving off the ground with the force of the eruption. His arms crossed over the girl, his weapons glittering in the strange melding of colors, waiting for their moment to taste blood.

Daichi-sama, in his left hand, was nothing but cold, hard steel, while the sword he had commissioned, hundreds of years prior to the moment in which he existed, pulsed in his right hand, sensing danger, its power awoken.

The message from the blade traveled over his skin and took root in his mind.

Protect the girl.

Taisho willed the power of the sword to calm, pulling it back within, restraining it, expanding his energy to hold it at bay. Outside his barrier, the two demons continued their barrage of powers.

A small smile curved his lips.

Onigumo had learned very little since they had last met. The demon still believed he was the most powerful creature in existence, overestimating, as only such an arrogant being could, Taisho's weakness, assuming him nearly incapacitated.

Taisho moved his wrist, and the sword in his right hand bowed, point hovering above the ground. As the metal tip met the earth, the land bucked once more, but this time, in the opposite direction, sending powerful shock waves toward his enemies.

Two barriers were simultaneously erected, and Taisho stood, sheathing Daichi-sama, his fingers moving to grip Kagome's shoulder. The girl moved with him, sensing his desire to retreat from the torn, uneven ground. Their enemies watched from behind their invisible barriers as the flow of power continued to keep them at bay.

Taisho smiled grimly, holding the blade out before him, taunting Onigumo, a silent exchange passing between the archenemies.

He had the girl and the sword.

And Onigumo had underestimated him once again.

But neither being was capable of fighting. Not the way they wished to. If they did engage in such a battle, they would both die, and Taisho knew that the demon would not jeopardize his chances. He would not risk losing his soul, now, when he was still weak.

Today would not be their warring day.

But it would come soon.

Taisho took another step backward, edging toward the bowed tree; the one he knew would afford the girl a semblance of protection. Onigumo's eyes flickered to the natural barrier. Sensing his master's desire, Fujin attacked, effortlessly melting into his elemental form.

"Get behind me," he hissed through his clenched teeth, removing his hand from Kagome's shoulder. The girl complied, ducking under his arm, staying close, sensing where his barrier ended, where she was safe.

Taisho parried, the spirit's claws raking against the sword, jarring his hold on the weapon.

Taisho pulled out his other sword, once again wielding both his weapons. With an easy, graceful sweep, he crossed the swords in front of his face, a white glow forming between their crossed flats.

"Kagome, run to the tree. NOW!"

He felt her hands leave his body, and he extended his barrier behind him, trailing it just ahead of her. Taisho released the power of his attack, willing his energy to solidify. From the two swords, white blasts of light erupted, flying at his enemies, driving them back, awarding him mere moments to act.

The wind howled around him, rain soaking his clothes, but his mind was somewhere else, calm and deadly, hardly aware of such minor inconveniences. The delicious sensation of power, absolute and infallible, swam through his veins, and a darker side to his being began to churn.

With great effort, he pulled the swords apart, turning to run to Kagome's side. In five bounding steps he was within the arms of the tree, plunging the red and black molded sword into the sheath on his back. He grabbed Kagome's hands and pressed them into the gnarled bark of the ancient tree. He called forth his power, his eyes fluttering shut, imparting his white magic on the tree and the girl, pulling up a barrier that melded with the ancient power of the tree.

Outside his makeshift barrier, Onigumo and Fujin approached, calling forth their own powers, readying their attacks.

"Do not move from this spot."

The girl stared up at him, her eyes wide, face blank as her mind worked, trying to understand his command. Taisho's own face was dark with the fury of an imminent battle. Seeing, the confusion in her eyes, he took her face in his free hand, forcing her to look up at him, waiting for her understanding, wasting precious moments to ensure her safety. Upon his touch, he saw his words take root, her eyes clearing as realization sank in. He turned, releasing his hold on her, and faced his enemies, forcibly subduing the uncontrollable rage that threatened to consume him.

* * *

Kagome trembled, feeling helpless, as Taisho stepped through the limbs of the tree, facing his enemies, no hint of fear or apprehension about him. The man reached behind him and unsheathed his unnamed sword, the misty magic pervading the whirling winds around him. The bark of the tree began to glow beneath her fingertips, warming to the touch, but she was unable to pull her eyes away from the scene before her, unable to comprehend the power growing at her fingertips.

There was a sudden eruption of power and her eyes watered at the bright flash of light. Through the haze of melded powers she saw her Protector, standing tall, his face turned away from the strange powers rolling off of his body like mist and steam, malicious in their intent, but seemingly harmless upon their touch.

Kagome watched as brilliant white light ran along the swords in Taisho's hands and then she thought she might go blind from the intensity, he moved, slicing through the air, throwing the attacks with agile movements, ripping the wind in half, the land ion two. The strange power displays continued, no side gaining either an advantage or disadvantage.

Onigumo was slowly removing himself from the forefront of the fight, melting into the thicket of the woods, his eyes gleaming through the rain. In his wake he left the wind spirit, hovering above the ground, his features and body blurred, melding into the elements that he mastered.

"Onigumo."

Taisho's voice ripped through the currents of air, shaking the earth, making it difficult to breath, echoing in Kagome's ears.

Taisho pointed his sword at the demon, threatening him, silently promising the enemy that he would, one day soon, die by his sword. Onigumo merely smiled, his figure darkening, continuing his retreat into the forest.

Before he disappeared into absolute darkness, he murmured one word.

"Goshinki."

Kagome's senses tingled, and she instinctively turned toward the excavation site. Born on the wind and the baleful force of the demon, a small glinting object flew through the air connecting with Fujin's open palm. Kagome's eyes narrowed, trying to identify the object in the spirit's hand.

"Taisho," Fujin roared the man's name, the whistle of the wind amplifying his voice. The vengeful spirit, still swirling in his elemental form, held the object high, flashing it before Taisho's eyes.

Kagome's eyes narrowed and she attempted to see through the thick leaves of her protective tree.

It was a fang.

The object in the spirit's opaque, swirling hand, disappeared, enveloped into the being. For a single moment in time, the rain, thunder, lighting, and wind, stilled, before a roar of power and black light erupted from Fujin's elemental form.

Kagome closed her eyes and turned her face away from the blast of dark power, the pure energy swirling through the forest floor, the bowed tree's branches groaning with the strain. The girl struggled to remain upright, to keep her hands on the tree.

Through the chaos tumbling around her, Kagome heard the strength of Taisho's own voice.

"_Fujin_!"

The blast of dark matter was abruptly cut off and Kagome's head whipped up, her eyes landing on Taisho, locked body to body with the demon. No longer opaque and misty, his enemy was tinged dark, purple and black swirling amongst grey, wisps of wind rolling off the strange mass whose claws were wrapped around Taisho's blade.

Kagome found her body moving before her mind had a chance to register her actions.

"Do not move!" Taisho ripped himself from Fujin's grip, yelling to her over his shoulder.

She shook her head but did not move, knowing that she could do nothing to help him, she was merely a spectator, forced to watch as her Protector battled his enemy, forced to watch as he slowly lost control.

She could feel his slipping reserve, the power that hung about him beginning to pulse with the effort he used to bend it to his will.

She watched as he thrust the greater weapon back into its scabbard, attempting to staunch the flow of power.

Kagome stifled a gasp as Fujin extended his long claws and swiped at Taisho. As his claws dug into the man's flesh, his elemental form was abandoned, rolling off his broad shoulders to mix with the rain, a suddenly startlingly human form standing where the misty creature had floated not a moment before.

"You have killed two of my clan members! I will make you suffer for our losses, for our brethren." The spirit held up his hand, grinning with menace. "My lord told me of the battle you fought here, at this very spot. Do you remember why it was so difficult, Taisho?"

Kagome's fear spiked as the spirit spoke, and she felt the shift in Taisho's power, understanding all too well, the gravity of the situation if he lost control again. Preoccupied with the scene before her, she failed to notice the sparks that snapped off rough bark of the tree, the whisper thin lines of power that began to emerge from the depths of the wood.

From the very tips of the leaves, up through the roots buried deep under the dark, muddy earth, a calm, ancient power began to move to the tree trunk, pooling beneath Kagome's numb fingers. The wind, still answering the pull of the demon, began to weaken, if only for a moment, all of the power in the woods suddenly diverted to the girl within the protective grasp of nature.

"You remember do you not? You remember why you almost lost this battle?" A dark chuckle rumbled out of Fujin's insolent mouth, echoing with the thunder and wind. A black sword infused with a brilliant azure shimmered in his hand, appearing out of the essence around him. "Goshinki, a mediocre demon, a half wit, a less than adequate warrior, could read your mind. The greatest son of Inu no Taisho! He saw all of your thoughts, every move, every plan and plot. He, a weaker demon than you, possessed greater skill than the famed son of a warlord." The spirit pointed his sword at the other man, his face twisted into an ugly, vicious mask, "And now I can read yours."

Fujin held up his hand, the fang gleaming in the middle of his palm, fused with his flesh, a dark energy from the bone violating the very air they breathed.

Kagome watched, horrorstruck, as the men vaulted toward each other, exchanging blows, swords flashing, the speed of their movements superhuman, her eyes unable to follow, only catching them when they paused, when their blades hit the right mark, injuring, slicing through clothing, clashing steel against steel.

Taisho did not speak; he betrayed no sign that he was in pain, that he was unable to land a blow. It was then, as she once again, took an unconscious step, that she felt the pull of the tree against her hand.

Her eyes widened as the power from the forest thrust from the woody indentions of the trunk, through her skin, lacing through her veins, her eyes blazing a brighter green, her vision disappearing into a tunnel of white light.

* * *

Taisho circled slowly, keeping his mind as distant as he could, relying on instinct rather than strategy. It was only his phenomenal ability to control and detach his mind that kept him from losing a limb or his life to the enemy before him.

Yes, he remembered that fateful fight upon the cliffs.

It had not been the first time that he had met an adversary that was nearly his equal, but it had been the first time he had been unable to turn the situation to his advantage. He would have died that day had he been any less of a warrior.

But he was not.

He was an exceptionally skilled warrior, one who did not bow down to an inferior enemy. It was not his ego that told him this, but his ability to remain alive and intact when enemies had the upper hand. While both Goshinki and Fujin were warriors in their own right, they did not have the ability that he did, the ability to separate, to remain in stoic and disengaged, to avoid the idiocy of speaking to one's enemy. It was a waste of precious oxygen and energy, taunting an opponent. It was even more wasteful when the action was directed toward Taisho. It did little if nothing, to faze him.

Fujin struck, his strangely tantalizing blade making a wide arc, falling near Taisho's shoulder. The man raised Daichi-sama, blocking the attack, immediately sliding his sword to his other side blocking the second attack, Fujin reading his mind and intention, attempting to find a weak spot in his defense.

While the wind spirit could detect his plans, his split second decisions, it remained to be seen if he was quick enough to both sense and deflect Taisho's own advances. While he did not doubt his enemy's strength, as a leader of an entire clan, an elemental one at that, he was bound to be powerful, but Taisho did not believe the being before him was capable of matching him in agility and ingenuity.

Shifting his feet, he gracefully turned his body, the inky sword passing him by, movements saving him from injury. As the enemy's steel slid harmlessly past, he reached his free hand to his back, unsheathing his greatest weapon. Fujin growled, and all around Taisho, the wind began to swirl with greater energy. At their feet, the mud had grown thick and deep, the water beginning to pool in the indentions left by their heavy footfalls, creating a treacherous landscape for their deadly dance.

A sudden humming of energy momentarily pulled his attention away from his enemy. His golden eyes widened as he saw, beneath the thicket of heavy branches, the form of the girl, slumped on her knees, a strange energy glowing around her body. A quick glance at the rest of the tree and the grounds beneath it showed him the intricate lacing of fine shimmering lines, the graceful entwining of ancient magic, conglomerating beneath her spread palms, swimming over her skin, infusing itself in her eyes.

Taisho felt the parting of the wind and he raised his sword, the clash of steel sending sparks into the air, his enemy's blade glancing off his clumsy defensive move. The black and blue metal glinted as it connected with his arm, a minor injury, but a stinging reminder of his predicament. As Taisho fought to regain his footing, the spirit took the moment to launch himself at the tree, his intention to cut away the branches and skewer Kagome where she knelt.

Taisho sprinted forward, his eyes on the enemy's back.

Fujin's elemental form suddenly erupted, seeming to fly in every direction at once, using his power over the wind to throw Taisho off. The man clenched his teeth, securing his grasp on the swords in his hands.

Fujin's own weapon flashed in the dark, striking the tree limbs, cutting through the foliage.

Or so he thought.

The millions of brilliant, tiny threads of the tree's essence pulsed, becoming brighter, the previously invisible barrier suddenly flaring with hot light. All around the tree, from the outskirts of the circle of branches, to the very top of it's mammoth height, the magical wall sealed itself, protecting the girl within.

Fujin was thrown, pummeled into the ground, sliding through the mud, connecting with the base of a small tree. Where his sword had sliced, there was a blaze of red light, angry and defiant. The tree seemed to shudder in the aftermaths of such power, the barrier weakening momentarily, before another flare of shimmering magic flowed upwards from the ground. Taisho's eyes swept over his enemy, buried in the mud, fighting to get back onto his feet.

For a split second in time, Taisho hesitated, his mind hovering between Kagome and Fujin. Two weeks earlier, he never would have had a second thought. He would have taken the opportunity to gain the upper hand. But, even as he thought about stepping toward his enemy, the strange voice in his head and the stab of something he could not name pulled him through the glittering curtain of leaves, his steps halting only as he dropped a knee at Kagome's side, sheathing Daichi-sama as he did.

She was breathing deeply, attempting, he assumed, to slow the thundering of her heart. The pulse at the base of her throat was twitching erratically, her shoulders rising and falling as belabored breaths wracked her body.

Taisho chanced a look over his shoulder. Fujin was getting to his feet. Apparently whatever power the tree had employed was strong enough to render the spirit momentarily incapacitated.

Taisho scowled. He could have finished him off if it were not for his preoccupation with the girl.

"Miss Higurashi."

She struggled to raise her bowed head, and Taisho, seeing her struggle, took her chin in his hand, tilting her head up. Upon seeing her face, he felt his own thundering heart, the clench of his stomach, a feeling of apprehension and astonishment sweeping through his body, leaving his extremities numb, his middle a flutter with a strange feeling of worry.

Her normally brilliant emerald eyes were blazing with an unearthly green fire, glowing in the darkness that pervaded the air around them.

Outside the wall of transparent light, Fujin had regained his composure and was staring at them through the glimmering barrier, daring to come close, but not daring to touch the magical obstruction.

"Give me the sword, Taisho."

Taisho stiffened at the croaking words that spilled from her cracked lips.

"What?"

The girl slowly pulled her hand from the tree, severing her connection with the magic, slowly rising to a stand. She reached a hand out and weakly tugged on the sword in his hand.

Taisho stood abruptly, wrenching out of her grasp.

"Whatever you are thinking of doing will only succeed in getting you killed. Stay where you are."

He turned and stepped up to the tree limbs, easily passing through the barrier to face Fujin once more.

"Taisho!"

The man ignored her, and instead, held his swords up to his enemy, silently baiting him. Fujin smiled slowly, his eyes sliding from Taisho to the girl behind him.

Taisho heard the rustle of leaves and out of the corner of his eye he saw Kagome slip outside the barrier, her eyes bleeding a green inferno.

His enemy laughed and the wind blasted down from the heavens, pulling small trees off of their bases, ripping leaves from the tops of trees, the rain pelting them at an unnatural angle.

"Get back inside the barrier!"

She held her ground, her eyes locked with Fujin's. "No. Give me the sword."

Before he could respond, the very world around them exploded in an onslaught of powers. The tree, the evil spirit, the girl herself, his own waning control, erupting into the air, and through the sudden haze, he saw the spirit move. He reacted before his mind registered his movement, sheathing both swords, sinking the claws that suddenly appeared on his hands into the spirit's back. His body began to revolt against his control, the nails in his enemy's elemental body lengthening, his teeth elongating, to draw blood in his mouth.

Taisho withdrew one of his hands, reaching over his back to snag the sword and sheath, ripping the items off their leather fastening, throwing it toward the girl, clenching his teeth together, pulling back his power, restraining his enemy from attacking her, restraining his own darkness.

* * *

Kagome could still feel the tingle of the tree's magic, tickling her skin, its message still vibrating in her head. She didn't have time to question it, to wonder why the ancient piece of nature had thrust its essence through her, commanding her to obey its orders.

The girl saw Taisho wrench the blade from his back, throwing it through the air, catapulting the weapon in a wide arc.

Kagome reached a hand into the air, screaming above the wind, "Let me lift you!"

The sheath connected with her hand and she hunched, twisting the blade under her arm, wrapping one hand around the scabbard, the other around the hilt. She wasted not a moment, darting through the woods, blinking against the rain, heading for the cliff, spurred on by a power that she could not name or identify, a power that was providential, sent to help them.

It was pure, and it desired purity.

It wanted them to survive; it desired the extermination of the evil taint.

At her back, there was a roar of fury, overwhelming in its intensity. She looked over her shoulder, her eyes widening at the sight.

Taisho and Fujin had discarded their weapons, and were now locked together, digging their claws into one another. Kagome did not have time to wonder at the white extensions of Taisho's fingers, ripping into the windy form of his adversary, nor did she have the mindset to question the sharp canine teeth that flashed as he snarled, his eyes bursting with a scarlet luster. The muscles in his arms rippled as he restrained the wind spirit from flying after her. Crimson blood spilled down Taisho's shoulders, the points of Fujin's talons ripping into pale flesh.

Kagome stumbled out into the open, the cliff face looming ahead of her, backlit by the lightning above, a towering mass of nature, awaiting her call.

* * *

With every second that slipped by, Taisho felt his dominance over his power slip, each moment throwing him further into a darkness that would be the end of them all. He squeezed his eyes closed, digging his claws deeper into his enemy, an apoplectic rage the catalyst of his waning control.

The beings thrashed, falling to the forest floor, sinking into the mud. In the tangles mass of limbs and claws, Fujin laughed harshly, swiping at Taisho's face, drawing blood.

"I will kill your bitch and take the sword. I will take it to Onigumo, give it to him and keep your head as a prize, as payment for the brethren you killed."

Taisho's power flared, bleached arcs of power running out of his claws, burning through Fujin's very soul. "Fool, you cannot kill her. She is the only one who can grant the power of the sword."

The spirit only laughed harder, sending his own magic back at Taisho, his icy indigo eyes gleaming with triumph. "Do you not think that Onigumo has found a way to wield the sword without the girl? Killing her would be nothing but a pleasure. Better yet, I'll keep her alive. Can you imagine what I will do with her? What I will make her do? How I will torture her? Can you imagine it, _Sesshoumaru_?"

Sesshoumaru Taisho, the greatest warrior the western lands had ever seen, the man who had forged an epic weapon, the being who had annihilated a demon, the soul who had lost much and gained little, could not have stopped the power that erupted within him had he wanted to.

At the utterance of his name a tempestuous howl left his lips as the world was bathed in a violent red.

* * *

Kagome's lungs burned as she weaved around the excavation holes in the ground, deep treacherous pits filled with muddy water. The girl slipped over the mucky ground, keeping her hold on the blade, her target only a few paces ahead of her.

She could feel the urgency in the air.

Taisho was losing his control.

Sliding to a stop in the mud, she faced the cliff, bringing the sword out from under her arm.

The hand she had wrapped around the hilt began to glow, almost translucent with the light.

"Alright," she whispered raggedly, "I did my thing. Now, you do yours."

Inside the sheath, the sword began to glow and hum with the power she had absorbed from the tree. The nudging of her body and mind lessened, a picture appearing in her mind.

Kagome heard the approach of the two beings, and she unsheathed the sword, now blazing with white and grey light, a strange fusing of two different enchantments. She felt the tempest surge toward her, intent on injury, intent on wresting the sword from her grasp.

Fujin sailed through the air, Taisho at his heels, the feral looks in both their eyes setting Kagome's heart at a frantic pace.

The sword in her hand vibrated strangely, and she heard an ethereal voice cut through the cascading sounds around her.

_Now, Protector._

Kagome thrust the sword at the base of the cliff, the blade exploding in a flash of bright light. The girl felt the weapon pass through the impossibly solid rock, to bury itself to the hilt, still burning with an ivory luminosity.

The cliff face rumbled, and then exploded with enough force to send the trees at the forest entrance backwards, snapping limbs and trunks, toppling the immediate tree line.

Kagome felt a body connect with hers, slamming her into the rock face, painfully pressing her into the sharp crevices, her hands still wrapped around the sword's hilt, her body twisting painfully. Strong arms braced against the slab of stone, protecting her head, enfolding her entire body in a defensive hold.

The pressure left her as soon as it had appeared, and she felt herself being shoved aside. She opened her eyes as she connected with a slab of razor edged block, now lying on the ground, at the bottom of the cliff.

Kagome watched as Taisho jerked the sword out of the rock and approached the wind spirit, lying prone in the mud, his body shattered and broken. Multitudes of fragmented granite had been imbedded into his body, slicing through his elemental form, cutting off his life force. Two colossal boulders pinned his arms to the ground, preventing him from moving. She doubted that he could, even if he had wanted to, his injuries were extensive and gruesome. Had he not been a spiritual being, Kagome would have been amazed he was still alive. As it was, she found it difficult to believe he was still able to speak.

He was cursing Taisho, a trickle of inhumanly black blood trailing out of his mouth and down his chin. Kagome covered her mouth, swallowing, a different kind of fear rendering her frozen.

Taisho, his back to the girl, hovered over the enemy, the sword in his hand glowing dimly. He moved, artfully shifting his hand, leaning down to connect the blade with Fujin's right wrist, visible beneath the boulder. There was a hiss of pain, and Kagome saw the blade sever the spirit's hand, Taisho plunging his sword tip into the palm of the amputated appendage, ridding the world of the fang, the last remnant of an ancient enemy.

The former warlord turned to the wind spirit, his voice calm as he spoke.

"You disgrace the clan you were born under." The sword dropped to the spirit's chest and Taisho addressed Kagome, but did not turn to look at her. "Look away, Miss Higurashi."

Kagome shivered, and turned, her eyes traveling up to the cliff face, the mangled and dismembered, but still magnificent piece of nature. There was a tension in the air and she heard the slice of the sword, and felt the disappearance of the soul, however tainted, releasing itself into the wind.

The rain instantly lightened, the gale dying down to a cold breeze, the perverse pollution dying away with the storm.

Kagome let out a breath, her body, only a moment before, full of a strange energy, abruptly became heavy and tired. She willed her heart to slow, alleviating some of the tension in her body and mind. A moment later, however, she found herself hauled off her feet, yanked up on her toes, to stare into bleeding red eyes.

"You fool!" Taisho shook her, none to gently, his anger manifesting itself in the grip he had on her body. "What possessed you to do that?"

Kagome choked on the air that caught in her throat. "Taisho, I didn't-" He snarled angrily at her. "Taisho!"

"There was a reason why I told you to stay within the tree!"

Kagome placed her hands on his heaving chest, more worried about his waning authority over his power than his anger with her. "Taisho, I know. Whatever power the tree had, it wanted me to use it. It wanted to help us. I don't think I had much of a choice, anyway. You were… are… losing control. The magic recognized me as the Protector and it commanded me to use its power. I didn't have time to argue," her voice dropped, dry and cracking with fatigue, "I didn't have much control over the situation."

Taisho's eye's dimmed, the red gaze melting into gold, and Kagome let her grip on the front of his muddy, rain soaked clothes slacken. The dull pain of his fingers wrapped around her arms lessened. Kagome would have breathed a sigh of relief had she not been abruptly swept off her feet and hauled over a tired shoulder.

"_Taisho_!"

The world swayed strangely as the blood rushed to her head. Her eyes trailed over the spot that their enemy had fallen, the only sign that a being had once lay in the in defeat, the indentions in the mud, the black blood that mingled with the earth and rain.

Taisho's clasp on her was infuriating, but through the swimming blood in her head, she found she did not care how he handled her, as long as they were both alive, as long as they had defeated their enemy, as long as Taisho was gaining back his formerly fraying control. The girl forgave the man for his transgression, and resigned herself to his unceremonious managing of the situation, watching as the cliff face disappeared and the forest closed in, the sweeping branches of the ancient tree enfolding its arms around the man and girl, protecting them, once again, from the terrors of the outside world.

* * *

_Hope you liked it! Thanks for reading and Reviewing!  
_


	16. The Rider

_So, thanks so much to the people who reviewed. I really appreciate it. Writer's like to know when they done good. This story is now posted at a single spark. also, author notes on my profile have been updated. feel free to contact me if you have questions i don't mind answering. read and enjoy!_

* * *

**Chapter 16 **

**The Rider**

Sesshoumaru was beginning to comprehend, although slowly, that the girl under his watchful eye was indeed, something _more_. She was a tangled mess of something _more_. His memory flared, a picture of her, worried and distracted, hurrying around the corner of the museum, her steps quick and light, moments before her life changed forever, the wind swirling around her body, enveloping her in its essence.

He had been distracted then, preoccupied with her colleague, the dark haired accountant, too absorbed in another troubling subject to notice the way the element affected her. Or perhaps, he thought, as he picked his way through the thick mire, glad that the rain had died down to a misty drizzle, perhaps, it was she who affected the element of the wind.

That would be unsettling indeed.

He was not entirely sure what this would mean to he, she, or their enemies. But, as his mind worked, passing over the viable scenarios, trying to find ways in which the possibility of her abilities could be harnessed to benefit their situation, he decided, once again, that he had underestimated her.

He recalled her questions, her damned persistent interrogations about what she was. He had not had an answer at the time and he, to his own distaste, had even less of an answer now.

That she had harnessed the power of the ancient tree, even unknowingly, even if forced by the magic itself, was a feat that spoke to him on a level he knew all too well.

His life had become something of a power struggle, through both his purposeful choices and his mistakes. He therefore found it well within his capabilities to recognize the immense potential displays of power.

And her actions in the previous moments had shown him just that.

In his mind's eye he saw her, sword in hand, running against the rain, like some ancient warrior or heroine from a long lost tale, wielding a blade that should have been beyond her comprehension, to bury it in the impossible earth, to shatter the earth, to explode the world or so it had seemed.

And just weeks prior she had been running papers through hallways.

And now…

She had been used as a vessel, transferring the power to the sword, compelled to follow the instructions of the ancient magic. But she had done this, and with a level of success that he could not even boast at that moment.

She had, to put it frankly, nearly defeated their enemy for him.

At this thought, Sesshoumaru felt the grating of one of his last nerves.

The weight over his shoulder shifted and he heard a strained voice ask, "Are you back in control yet? Because I am starting to see spots of a rather interesting color and I think it might have to do with the fact that all of the blood in my body has rushed to my head. Or, perhaps, it is the delayed reaction to the severing of your enemy's hand. Now, unless you want to experience either the violent upheaval of my stomach or the explosion of my brain, then, maybe, you could think about putting me down."

Sesshoumaru glanced around the inner sanctum of the tree, the last vestiges of its magic twinkling amongst the fronds and limbs. He turned in a slow circle, ignoring the squirming of the creature in his clutches.

In the back of his mind he was fully aware of the path his actions were leading him down. He had set himself on the inevitable road to an altercation. It was only a matter of time before the girl exploded in anger. He only hoped that her current position would render her unconscious first, and forestall, if only for a little while, the verbal and perhaps physical, brawl that would ensue.

Finally, deeming their hideaway safe for the moment, he lowered her, disregarding the fierce desire to dump her on her backside.

Her eyes drifted back and forth for a moment, the world still spinning. Sesshoumaru reached a clawed hand out and steadied her, and she looked, or attempted to look, up into his eyes.

"I think I might be sick."

Her spinning irises were still blazing a fiery emerald, and he saw faint traces of the tree's magic, framing her eyes, coppery white and gleaming, infinitesimal threads of power, just barely visible on her skin, trailing from the corners of her eyes to her temples, before fading effortlessly into her dark hair. As he watched, the lines grew dimmer, and her eyes become a lighter shade of iridescent green. With that though, she lost even more blood to her face, which had, in the shifting light of the forest, turned a most peculiar shade of grey-green.

At the dissolution of the great power, her body reacted, and the girl turned and stumbled over the tree roots to a spot near the edge of the hanging limbs, to empty her stomach and bring relief to her trembling body.

She moaned in distaste, leaving the man to watch her shuddering back, his own face contorted with displeasure.

He was surprised she had not passed out. To move so much power in her body, untrained, after never having experienced such a phenomenon, was more than impressive.

Kagome rose unsteadily, and parted the heavy leaves, cupping her hands to collect the cold rain. When she had gathered enough of the substance, she brought her hands to her lips and washed out her mouth, the color returning to her cheeks as she dispelled the last of her sickness from her body.

Turning to him, she ran piercing eyes over his body, starting at his hands, still clawed and glowing, up to his scratched and ripped upper body, to his parted mouth, where the tips of sharp teeth glistened, to his cheekbone, where her eyes finally landed on his eyes, the last traces of red fading into shining gold.

He had expected her to ask him questions, to become angry, to shake her fist at him.

She did nothing of the sort.

Instead, she moved to sit against the thick trunk of the tree. She closed her eyes and listened to the rain, affording Sesshoumaru the opportunity to regain his composure, to cleanse his lungs of the burning anger, to reign in his magic.

He had, at least for a while, dispensed of the wind spirit known as Fujin. He did not for one moment doubt that his wind clan would do everything in their power to resurrect their leader. Or, come after him in force.

His greatest enemy, the demon Onigumo, had made shown his face in a blatant display of power. The demon's flaunt both angered and unsettled him. He knew, even in the days of the warriors, that Onigumo had been prone to ridiculous flaunts of power, be that by his lackeys or by his own personal show of strength. Unfortunately, those displays did not mean that his enemy was a fool; in actuality it was quite the opposite. He was powerful and his exhibitions of said power were meant not to impress, but to remind both his followers and his enemies of his abilities.

And then, he mused, as he watched the claws of his hand disappear into blunt human fingernails, felt the receding pain of his injuries as his magic healed him, and the last remnants of his power leave him, there was the declaration of his name.

His forename.

The forgotten name.

The name that he had willingly given up.

A name that had plagued him for centuries, had been his weight, had been a reminder of his mistake, his defeat, his inabilities.

It made his newly calmed blood boil again, as his mind flashed to the glinting smile of the wind spirit, the name that fell off of his lips.

_Sesshoumaru. _

The man swallowed hard, as if the action would relieve him of the bitter taste in his mouth, would erase the name from the wind and the world.

"Taisho."

He turned quickly upon the sound of her voice, almost forgetting she was there, silently resting beneath the tree.

When their eyes met, her saw her relief draw itself in her face. Whatever she saw in him at that moment set her at ease. Beneath the thick mud that was coated on her neck and lower face, he saw her muscles relax and the worry lines disappear.

"Are you alright now?" Her voice was soft, like the rain outside their natural shelter.

He inclined his head ever so slightly. He did not wish to admit that he had not been anything but fine, in control, and perfectly capable of handling the situation. Of course, he had not been any of those things and it did not help his damaged ego that she was the reason they had so neatly wrapped up their skirmish.

Yes, he would have been able to dispense with Fujin…eventually.

He knew he should have been pleased that they had been able to avoid any massive injuries, but instead, he found the prickly sensation of annoyance, curling down his spine and taking root in his stomach.

He surmised it had something to do with his new knowledge of her potential abilities. He did not like that another unknown factor had been thrown into their already unstable situation.

But, it seemed, that fate wanted it to be what it was. A twisted, complicated, unknown disarray.

"Yes," he finally said, his voice sharp.

She gave him the hint of a smile and reached behind her head to pat the tree. "Good thing you knew the protective nature of this thing. How did you know?"

Sesshoumaru touched his chest, fingering the leather strap that had connected to the scabbard of his sword. He glanced around and saw the sheath, lying not far from where she had lost her battle with her stomach. Taisho strode over to the metal, scooping it off the ground, ridding it of the mud where he could, sheathing his sword, reattaching it to his back, before turning to face her once more.

"These forests were once guarded and tended by a wood spirit. I knew of her once, a lifetime ago. She was very powerful, her lands extending for many hundreds of miles. She planted this tree. It was one of the first children of her forest. Her magic still exists within its roots, even if she is gone. I knew it would afford us some sort of protection but-"

"But you didn't expect it to assault our enemies?" Her voice was wry and she raised a dark, sarcastic eyebrow. He saw her split lips move with the infinitesimal sign of her amusement, the brief flash of a smile sparkling somewhere in her dirty countenance.

Taisho's mouth twisted as well, although his lips morphed into a sneer rather than a dry smile. "You could say that." They were silent a moment, and then, because he could not stand to be left in the dark, "What did the tree tell you?"

Kagome grimaced as she shifted her sitting position, her back arching as she pressed into a particularly uncomfortable portion of the gnarled tree. "It was this voice in my head, I could feel it humming over my skin. It reminded me of the sword, except this was more _tangible_. The voice, I suppose it was that of the tree, told me to take the weapon, yours," she gestured to the sword on his back, " and that it," she gestured above them to the tree, its leaves slowly dripping rain onto their heads, "would take care of the rest. I guess it channeled its magic through me and well," she nodded to the cliff face, "you saw the rest."

"I did indeed." Sesshoumaru moved to sit on a raised root near the girl.

Outside the tree the rain had picked up its beat again, becoming a constant, but pleasant patter of noiseless drums and staccato, shadowy footsteps.

"What happened to our resident bad guy?"

Sesshoumaru stifled a humorless laugh. "I believe he underestimated the extent of my lapse in control."

"He _ran_?" The man smiled, a brilliantly menacing baring of teeth. "Coward," she muttered, running a hand across her damp face. She was silent for a moment, and then, when he felt the flickering nervous gaze of her eyes; he waited, knowing very well what she desired to know. "So," she hesitated before looking up at him again, and he caught the discomfort around her, clear around her like a blush or a smile, "Care to explain the claws and fangs?"

He regarded her coolly. "No."

Her eyes flitted away from him, moving to peer up into the darkest recesses of the tree's uppermost branches.

"Maybe later then," she murmured and Sesshoumaru answered with his own noncommittal grumble, reverberating in his chest.

They sat for a time, simply listening to the rain, a calming sensation that went a long way to setting the man at ease. When he deemed it safe to use his powers, to traverse the wide world, he stood, extending his hand to the girl.

She gave him a sharp look and he sighed.

"No, I will not carry you against your will and I apologize for doing so earlier."

Kagome's frown morphed into an unreadable look, though her eyes held an aloof distaste, which was most humorous, and she slipped her fingers into his, her free hand bracing against the tree.

As soon as she was on her feet, Taisho felt her body slacken, and his eyes immediately went to the palm pressed against the firm bark of the tree, glowing faintly. He growled in exasperation, readjusting his hold on her body, watching as her head lolled backwards, revealing a peaceful face, a mind that was enthralled in yet another vision.

This was what he had wanted. Another clue, their next step. But he could not shake the displeasure he felt, once again, at his utter inability to control. To control her, to control the sword, to control any damn thing. So, he resigned himself to wait, as he was sure he would continue to do, until the girl in his arms gave him the key to unlock his power.

* * *

Kagome found herself experiencing, not for the first time, the curious sensation of falling through the sky. She knew, somewhere in the back of a rather confused mind, that what she was experiencing was another vision, but was still unable to quell the fear that snagged her middle.

The air rushed past her and the clouds opened up, the land galloping to meet her. Her eyes darted around as she tumbled, almost too gracefully, and she willed the sickening swirling of earth and sky to come to an end. Through the twisting and turning of her eyesight, she noticed that she was plummeting, once again, into the green swaying field from her first vision.

Kagome's voice caught in her throat and she raised her arms to protect her face as the ground made to make her acquaintance.

Her impact was a light one, and could actually have been considered nonexistent, given that she felt nothing but the sudden halt of her movement. When her eyes opened she found herself lying on her back, the high grass swaying around her, obstructing her vision of anything but the sky she had just plummeted from.

She stood quickly, stumbling through the grass, seeing the swell of the hill before her, the thundering in her veins, feeling the desperate call for help. She pumped her arms, willing her legs to move faster, but as if she were encased in a bad dream, one with an enemy closing in, her body too tired to hurry, she could move no faster than if she had been chest deep in water.

Her stride lengthened and she came up over the top of the hill, stopping short. The dirt slid under her feet and she whirled her arms backwards, barely regaining her precious balance.

She hovered for a moment, as if she were not simply on the top of the gentle hill, but on a steep precipice, looking out into the beyond, the unknown. Kagome took a single step, one that turned into many, as she hurried down the hill, her normally clumsy feet propelling her onward with little resistance and an odd absence of fumbles.

Her attention was focused on a small, dilapidated hut, centered in the middle of a small valley of hills. Kagome's senses were heightened, the fine hairs on the back of her neck and her forearms. She glanced over her shoulder, the unsettling feeling of a predatory eye spurring her steps.

Fifty feet.

Forty feet.

Thirty.

Twenty.

The strange urge in her gut swelled. She found herself suddenly awash with emotions that were not her own.

Fear. Sorrow. Grief.

She was slowly dying, trapped within that tiny hut amongst the ever-waving grass, her life force further severed with each passing moment. An unknown power keeping her in place, chaining her to the slow death, the ending of everything.

Kagome felt the dry wracking sobs of empathy and she stumbled, falling through the green sway, only to crawl back onto her feet.

Ten feet.

Behind her, she heard the thundering movement of a massive being, approaching her with lightning speed, parting the vegetation in an attempt to lash out at its prey.

Her alarm rose to new heights, threatening to choke her.

Five feet.

There was a doorway, up three rickety wooden steps, darkness slipping out from the yawning hole.

Her feet pounded the grass, flattening it, creating a path in a place where no human had wandered in centuries.

Three feet.

With the last amount of her strength she launched herself toward the doorway, her hands reaching out, fingers stretching for darkness, willing it to claim her, limbs shaking with the effort to escape the enemy behind her.

She did not feel the pain of the impact.

No. There was no pain.

But while she felt nothing, her eyes saw everything.

Her body was tossed, mid leap, to roll through the grass, a confusing maze of verdant greens. Struggling to her feet, she heard the slithering against the grass, felt, once again, the rapacious gleam in the hunter's eyes.

Standing, she turned, hoping that she would awake from her vision and prayed that it was indeed, just that. Nothing more than a glimpse or nudge at what could be, not what was for certain, not what was intended.

When she turned, she saw something that, even after her tumultuous time with Taisho, her interaction with enemies that should not have existed, the realization that magic and sorcery and powerful beings were real and true, could never have prepared her for.

It towered above her; a monstrosity of metal and skin infused together, a sickening twist of living tissue and alloy. It was a behemoth, a gargantuan creature. Biting metal incisors gleamed in the half light, fiery red eyes in a face mutilated by the silver sheen of the metal, claws sharpened to lustrous points, perfect for skewering.

Through her horror she was able to note that the face, or what should have been a countenance, seemed to resemble that of a woman.

The enormous jaw muscles flexed and the mouth snapped opened and closed, a menacing warning of her fate. Talons on iron worked feet flexed as the monstrosity took a single step.

She was staring into the world taken over. The land as it died, the sickening perversion of a greater pure power. And it nearly killed her, vision or no.

Kagome's heart jumped into her throat and she turned and ran, breaking through the sluggish dream like state, her legs suddenly bestowed with the ability to move at a the speed they wished.

The air vibrated with a silent roar, but there was nothing in the world that would have made the girl turn around.

She ran blindly, through a sea of green, the vegetation beginning to blur as her legs picked up speed, her hands clenched in fists, her arms swinging at her sides. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks, to fall to the waving blades below, glistening as they touched the edges of the grassy oscillations.

The greens of the grass and the purple of the thunderheads melted together, but she kept running, unsure if she was safe, if she was out of harms way.

When her feet met hard, smooth ground, she halted abruptly, blinking away the tears.

A silent gasp escaped her mouth to tumble endlessly and echo forever.

She stood in a long hallway, large windows lining the right hand side, rain pelting the panes of glass.

She knew this place.

A door halfway down the hall burst open, and she saw a disheveled version of herself, tumble out, stumbling barefoot on the wooden floors.

Her eyes widened with understanding.

Taisho's mansion.

The day she had first discovered the world that the mysterious man lived in.

The afternoon she had met his enemies and they had become her own.

The day she had almost died.

Kagome attempted to move, but she was rooted to the spot, forced to watch as the demon's shell, the horror that it was, come after her, or rather, the past her. If that was what she was seeing. Truth be told, she remembered so little of that day, she could not have said with certainty that the events she was witnessing were the truthful past.

She could do nothing as the black mass of malignant power throttled after her, claws reaching, snagging, ripping, to pull her off her feet.

Kagome turned away then, knowing what happened next, her throat constricting with the faint memory of suffocation.

And when she opened her eyes, she was staring into the face of the man who had changed everything in her world.

Golden depths held her in an uncompromising gaze. Had she not been so upset with her vision, she would have been entirely uncomfortable with his proximity to her. But, even as this thought crossed her mind, she swatted it away. After all, she was beginning to understand that he had little comprehension for such trivial matters as personal space, that and, he viewed close contact to be entirely beneficial. If he was close, he could control, he could save, he could destroy. But in her case, he was close to control, perhaps even to save.

Unnerved by his stare, her prone, aching body, and the return of the dizzying sensations, she could do nothing but blink at him.

"What did you see?" He finally asked.

Kagome swallowed the knot in her throat and took a deep breath through her nose, forcefully stopping the sickening dance of her stomach.

"Huge expansive green rolling hills. One tiny hut. One giant metal monster. There was something hidden in the shack, something guarded. It felt like," she paused, becoming distant as she thought back to the vision, "it felt like someone had wrapped up everything beautiful and natural and confined it to that tiny space. It was sad, desolate, and inconsolable. It felt as if the world was dying."

Upon her words, she sensed a change in his emotions, though he betrayed no outward sign of said change.

Exhausted, both mentally and physically, she did not argue when Taisho stood, easily throwing her over his shoulder, _breaking his promise_, carrying her out of the bowed arms of the tree and into the forest.

"What does that mean?" She asked weakly, watching the patterns on the ground change, her mind already clouding with the effort to remain awake.

"We have a wood spirit to visit," he responded simply.

Kagome, far too tired and overwhelmed to ask questions, simply allowed the last traces of her tension to leave her body, going limp over his shoulder.

As they traversed further into the thicket, the tree slowly faded from her view, the majestic statue of nature gleaming in the rain, whispering as the wind danced through its many leaves. She blinked the sleep from her eyes and heard her voice intone in her mind.

_Thank you. _

The leaves rustled in response, the faint traces of gleaming silver magic sparkling once more, a silent acceptance of the girl's gratitude.

* * *

The roads were still slick with the rain, but that did not stop him from throttling forward, increasing his speed, enjoying the rush of the air over his body.

The scenery sped by as he leaned gently into the curve, the machine under him whirling pleasantly, a kind of freedom that he wished he could indulge in more often. He grinned wickedly, hunkering down over the beast.

The miles stretched farther, and the countryside began to expand, humanity becoming sparse, villages and towns few and far between.

He was a wild thing; a creature that could not be tamed and he relished the opportunity to be so liberated. After all, he didn't know when he would be able to indulge in such pleasantries again.

His eyes adjusted as the sun began to peak out through the dark clouds. Ahead, on the flat plains, he could still see the distant rain, the pull of a power that was unmistakably linked to him.

It was so familiar, so strong; he could almost taste it on the wind.

He laughed then, the finality and reality truly sinking in.

Not too much longer and he would be there. His hand moved, accelerating once again, propelling him onward to his future.

On his back, a simple black scabbard gleamed, the sun glinting off the man as he disappeared around the curving bends of the road, intent on reaching its end.

* * *

The mansion was quiet.

Good.

He liked it best that way, when in the depths of the night, no one stirred, the sound of pattering feet had died away, voices were confined to dreams, and everyone and everything seemed to be suspended in a tranquility.

But while the night was a quiet one, it was far from peaceful.

No, his own thoughts did much to dispel any peace of mind that might have been present.

It might have had something to do with his fatigue, his struggle to maintain a balance with his power. Or perhaps it was the girl, her visions; her own sudden show of power, or the potential for. And then the disturbance of his night might have been traced to his name, thundering around inside his head, depriving him of a moment's rest.

Or, he thought, growling in disdain, it could be the small annoying beast that was sitting on his feet.

After they had returned to his home and he had healed Kagome's minor injuries, Sesshoumaru had ordered the girl to bed. Her dog had stayed by her side for several hours before coming to find him. The wretched creature had been following him around all day and every time he sat, or paused for a moment, the varmint cemented itself on his feet.

Vulgar obscenities disturbed the silence as he glared down at the dog. His threats however, had the opposite affect he was hoping for. Instead of sensing his absolute loathing, the corgi sighed and stretched, lying over the man's feet.

"You are just like your owner," he snarled.

Giving up his fight, he leaned back in the chair and rested an arm on the side, moving his hand to his face, absently tracing the age lines that should have existed around his eyes.

Kagome had been sleeping for hours, affording him time to think. She had not asked how he had known, without a doubt, that her vision had pointed to a particular individual. He had not been surprised however, given that the tree had bestowed her with its power. It was not much of a shock that she had then received a vision from the tree, one that pertained to its maker.

It was, truthfully, what he had hoped for.

Not, that vision, or that tree, or that spirit, or that particular anything, but it was a step. Hopefully, a step in the right direction.

The sword had shown her the Shikon Site, so he had taken her there, in hopes that they would come across another clue.

In all rights, her vision should have given him hope that they were closing in on some sort of answer.

The wood spirit, incredibly powerful in her own right, might provide answers to his questions. But, he thought, this was a silly hope, a hope that should be resigned to someone who was not Sesshoumaru Taisho. He sighed. It did not matter what he thought, what he hoped. He would go, take the girl with him, and keep his aspirations to himself.

But first, before he undertook yet another dangerous expedition, he needed to implement his plan.

Golden eyes gleamed in the dark, glistening distant memories, hazy, but not forgotten. He flexed his hands, watching, as the white sorcery appeared, his fingernails naturally shaping into claws, their habitual form.

He could not pinpoint when he had gained that tiny amount of control over his power. But, nevertheless, it was a promising indication. It looked as if the future held more potential than he had been expecting.

But _really_, first, the real first, before implementing his plan, before all else, he had to deal with the foreboding presence rocketing its way toward his home, no doubt to interrupt the fragile situation, to meddle, to be a general hindrance.

Taisho sighed, and then, because he could not stand to have three beings with whom he constantly battled, he reached down and scratched the dog's ears, earning a satisfied snort from the animal.

* * *

Kagome knocked on the doorframe of Taisho's indoor dojo, bleary eyed, sleep still claiming her fuzzy head.

She felt as if she had been run over by several large commercial trucks, followed by a quick beating with shovels, whereupon she was then hung upside down until the blood in her head had drained to her ears, rendering her numb whilst inducing a splendid explosion behind her eyes.

As she contemplated how all that could possibly occur to a single individual, Taisho slowed his movements to a stop, his eyes centering on her pale face.

Kagome shuffled into the room and wrapped her arms around herself. She was still wearing her boxers and an overly large shirt, and the chills that ran up her body were a product of the large drafty mansion and her choice in sleepwear.

"Miss Higurashi, are you feeling well?"

No, you insufferable ingrate.

How dare he ask her how she felt?

Obviously she did not feel well at all.

But, Kagome's ability to form words alluded her and she simply glared at him, moving to sit against the far wall, waving her hand at him to continue his exercises. Sliding down the cool wooden panel she blinked rapidly, her eyes still adjusting to the real world, her dreams having left her feeling a measure of uncertainty, as if reality was a glass floor, and she was walking a perilous journey across it.

She wondered if her tenuous grip on the waking world was a further product of her vision, the unrest and unease she was experiencing something akin to what she felt while in the throes of the reverie. Ajax walked up to her, taking his established position on her feet.

Kagome looked up at Taisho, confused, her fingers burying themselves in the dog's coarse hair. "Has he been with you this entire time?"

Taisho cast her a wry, almost defeated look. "He has."

"And you didn't attempt to skewer him?" Her voice rose in its incredulity.

The man's eyes glinted for a moment before he spoke. "The thought crossed my mind, but," he paused, his eyes flickering from the dog to the sleepy young woman, "I thought it a risky move, given the damage you inflicted on our enemy, the wind spirit. I could not chance you still carrying some of the power of our friend, the tree."

Kagome laughed hoarsely and ruffled the tan fur around Ajax's face. "Speaking of which, what about this tree spirit? How did you know?"

Taisho sheathed his swords and walked up to Kagome, eyeing the dog, their relationship still on unsteady feet. Kagome's drowsy smile brightened; pleased to know that at least something unsettled the perfect warrior.

"Those woods are old, ancient. The spirit that guarded and tended to them was well known, by both man and mystical, powerful beings. Her forests once extended for miles, but upon the industrialization and urbanization of man, her power waned. She disappeared into the smog and metal behemoth of humanity. She survives somewhere; otherwise her lands would be dead. Your vision simply reinforced what I already believed to be true, that she lives still, away from humanity. Perhaps trapped and guarded, perhaps willingly put in her solitude."

"But, how do you know where to find her?"

"There are those who now know or could detect the whereabouts of the spirit. Given your description of the land, and what I already assumed, I believe she is somewhere in the north. It is quieter there, in some ways…" He trailed off, still watching her with unimagined interest.

"So, then, what was that metal monstrosity that I saw in my vision?" She carefully avoided his prying gaze as she spoke. "It wasn't… real, was it?"

Taisho regarded her with his sweeping gaze before moving away to continue his training. "I cannot say for certain. I would assume the beast you saw was a physical manifestation of the those circumstances that are slowly killing her."

Kagome nodded, remembering the way flesh and metal had molded together. "A metaphor," she murmured.

His movements never slowing, he asked her, "What was that, Miss Higurashi?"

Kagome lifted her gaze to his lithe form, her eyebrows rising by a minute fraction as she watched his agile movements, deep inside, a jealous but highly amused and impressed voice applauding and cheering on his display.

"I said that it was a metaphor. The beast. A metaphor for her enemy… humanity."

A morose feeling suddenly overwhelmed her as she felt, on behalf of her race, a sense of guilt. "Taisho, were there many demons and spirits and gods at one time?"

"Yes. Where do you think all of the legends come from? There were many, at one time, when the world was still young and undiscovered, when humans feared what they did not know." He pivoted, swinging around to face her, Daichi-sama flashing menacingly. His gaze landed on her worried face. "It was not simply the product of humanity's movements and changes that dwindled the mythical creature's and being's numbers. We had our own wars, our own destructions. We are as selfish as people," he scowled, "sometimes more so."

"I'm sure you would be the poster boy for said foible." She earned herself a surly warning glare.

"Some powerful beings exist in the world that humans do, others shy away, others pass between realms, and still others have never been seen or heard of by human or god alike. When I said that there were no rules to such great magic, I meant it. There is nothing that is set in stone. Magic, power, attitudes, alliances, they all change. Each being is as different as the next, their abilities ranging from the inferior to the cosmic."

The man slid to a smooth stop, his sword extended into the air, thrust at his foe, somewhere in the great wide world. Turning to face her, he extended his hand, white light materializing at his fingertips to disperse into the air, shinning with an intensity that could rival the stars. Kagome watched, transfixed, momentarily caught up in the absurdity of all he was saying, while deep down inside, she could not help but feel the swell of excitement and curiosity. "No other being has abilities quite like mine. There are others who are similar, but we do not share every magical prowess."

For a brief moment, she saw Taisho as a twin, and the thought left her feeling nauseous. She was not sure the world, let alone a former museum assistant, could deal with that much… Taisho.

He fisted his hand, abruptly cutting off the spell, leaving Kagome with light spots in her eyes, the room shades darker in the aftermath of light. She blinked, and rubbed her face, not quite awake yet, despite the intriguing conversation she was enmeshed in.

"When will we leave?" She asked through her yawn, stretching her hands above her head, enjoying the delicious sensation of warming muscles.

"A few days. There is," he paused and she opened her eyes to see him standing still, his head cocked to one side, eyes distant as he listened to something outside her hearing. At that moment, Ajax sprinted out of the room, his ears perked.

"Ajax!?" Kagome hopped to her feet and peered after her dog.

"There is something I have to take care of," Taisho muttered darkly. She glanced at him over her shoulder. "Go get your dog."

Casting him a quizzical look, she complied, wondering how his mood could change so quickly in a single instant. Shrugging off her disconcertion, leaving him to his troubles, she jogged down the hallway, following the small form of her best and most loyal companion.

"Ajax!"

She called after him, but he did not stop until he slid into the expanse entryway, stopping at the large front door of the mansion. Kagome tugged at the heavy obstruction, pulling it open with some difficulty.

"What on earth has gotten into you?"

The dog darted out of the mansion and Kagome followed behind, a worried expression contorting her features. As she stepped after the beast, as Taisho so liked to refer to him, a sudden noise caught her attention. She paused, listening, her eyes scanning the heavy foliage and the long drive that ended at a wrought iron gate.

The sound echoed through the trees and down out of the hills. Her head swam as she fought through her fatigue to understand the nature of the clamor. The noise became clearer as it neared and Kagome's eyes widened.

It was a motorcycle.

Her astonishment was both a product of her realization that she had not heard a single vehicle cross the roads or byways near wherever Taisho lived and also, that the vehicle in question, the vehicle making the noise, was headed in her direction.

As if the gates and the magic therein knew the rider, they parted, the black and red clad figure gunning the engine to the end of the drive to swerve to a stop, kicking up dust and dirt in an impressive display of skill.

Kagome would have been impressed had she not detected a level of smug, self-righteousness rolling off the helmeted person astride the motorcycle. Her gaze traveled up the biker's back, landing on a sword, strapped and secured in place.

She raised a disdainful eyebrow as the rider pulled off their helmet, to reveal a smirking young man. He looked young, not a youth, a few years experience as a man, but there was a deceptive charm in his eyes, a line or two on his face, that made judging his age somewhat of a difficulty.

The curve of a lip, a smug, and she knew, infuriating lip, offensive lip, parted to flash teeth. And oh, how that smile, the baring of pearly whites, reminded her of another.

He ran a hand through his hair, as if to preen.

Black, tousled hair fell into insolent, laughing amber eyes.

Insolent, laughing amber eyes flecked with gold.

Kagome gasped inaudibly as she pieced together his features, knitting them into place, securing the last puzzle piece to a mystery that was not entirely perplexing, but shocking nonetheless.He bore a striking resemblance to Taisho.

Dismounting from his ride he glanced at her before shoving the helmet into her hands. He then proceeded to strip off his black gloves, shake them free of dust, unzip his jacket and stretch, all before turning back to Kagome to hand her said articles of clothing.

She gaped at his audacity.

Words actually failed her.

And with that, he turned and headed into the mansion, only pausing to glare down at Ajax.

Kagome, her vision blurred by a sea of crimson rage, promptly pulled her hands out from underneath his items, allowing them to fall into the dirt of the driveway, causing a sullen Ajax to skitter out of the way of the spinning, and she hoped, cracked, helmet.

"Well, I suppose that answers my question about Taisho's family. Rude, cocky, and arrogant must run in the bloodline, and that was it, _right there_! Come on, Ajax." She kicked the helmet out of her way, stalking into the mansion, slamming the door behind her, the wrath of her fury lighting the air with electricity, making all but the two most mysterious men run for cover.

* * *

_Haha! Hope you liked it. _


	17. Nothing but a dream

_Thanks for the reads and reviews! I appreciate it. I hope you like this chapter and the next few, they have been somewhat difficult to write. But the exciting news is that around chapter 20 or shortly thereafter, there will be some awesome revelations and we'll get to the crux of the plot! Also, in coming chapters, many questions are answered. Get excited. Hope you enjoy. Also, please pardon if there are grammatical errors. I churned this out and rehashed it kind of fast._

* * *

**Chapter 17**

**Nothing but a dream**

Sesshoumaru made his way out of his home and through the grounds, easily finding the path to a deeper part of the garden. The sun was finally shinning after all the rain, and his golden eyes traveled upward, peering through the heavy foliage of the thicket, brightness momentarily blinding him.

The path he wandered was an old one, preserved for many years though rarely traveled. His feet remembered the way, he did not need to focus on the overgrown path, and instead let his mind wander to more important subjects.

He could feel the presence of a familiar aura, traveling through his house, finding its way to the garden, following his path.

He did not however, halt his steps.

He would not halt.

That the person in question had defied him, and not for the first time, was not his foremost reason the anger that throbbed just below his skin. It was that he had not only been defied, but that in doing so, the guilty character had either knowingly or unknowingly placed them all in danger.

The man slipped into the thicker parts of the vegetation, his eyes traveling along the growing bamboo stalks, creating wall like structures that encased the path, blotting out all but the faintest traces of golden sunlight. The air was clean here, serene and undisturbed.

That was where the uninvited guest found him, standing in the midst of a small circular clearing, gazing at the shafts of sunlight filtering through the verdant greenery.

Sesshoumaru did not turn. Instead, he un-sheathed both his weapons and thrust them into the soft earth, allowing the lazy rays of the light to caress them with their warmth.

His swords were like idols, like icons, the gods of war.

They were a meditative state that a warlord could strive to reach.

They were steel; they were calculated, cold, cunning.

Meant to severe, meant to lick the blood from the enemy's veins.

They defined him, they stripped him bare, they conquered, they divided, they killed, they healed.

He was something without them, but he was more with them.

And so he stood, admiring the past, the delicious curve of the metal, the battles they had won, and the ones they would.

Finally, after the newcomer had failed to speak, Sesshoumaru broke the tense silence, his mind taking the step from death, to turn, like a coin on its edge, to another side, another part of himself.

"What are you doing here?"

There was an inaudible intake of a slow breath. "I want to know what happened."

"In regards to?" The deep rumble of his voice silenced the birds in the trees, sending a few of the creatures flitting to darker recesses of the wood.

"The sword. Your power." There was a pause, "The demon."

Sesshoumaru shifted, restraining from reaching out and physically manifesting his angry thoughts on his kin.

"I sent you to Tokyo for a reason. I thought you would understand that. Even one as boisterous as you could blend in with the throngs of people. It was for both our benefits."

"I won't hide from your enemies anymore. Yours," the voice paused again, and he detected a hint of melancholy, "or mine."

They were silent for a few moments, listening to the wind rustling the leaves and the blades of grass.

Only then did Sesshoumaru turn around to face his sibling.

He was unchanged.

It had been some time since they had last seen each other. But he was still a brash young man, his hair still midnight black, unruly, tousled, whisper thin silver strands hidden amongst ebony, eyes still kindling with mischief, insolence, and wicked humor.

His eyes, amber flecked with gold, were a reversed mirror of the Sesshoumaru's own. It never ceased to remind him of their blood ties, of all that they shared.

He was still shorter than Sesshoumaru, still smaller, still half the strength, power, and ability.

And underneath it all, there was remained a sadness, a waning and tiring, heavy weight that should not have been anchored to a man like him. No. It did not fit him, but it was there just the same.

But he was his brother, the same as he had always been.

Despite his anger, Sesshoumaru grasped his sibling's forearm, his kin returning the gesture.

The two brothers watched each other, one wary, the other commanding.

Perhaps the important things would not have gone unsaid, postponed for a later time, had the jingling of dog tags and the shuffle of uncertain feet not interrupted the serious moment.

Sesshoumaru released his younger brother from his gaze, turning his attention to the pathway.

"We will talk later." His voice rang with finality and the younger man did not argue.

Around the bend in the path Ajax appeared, bounding before his owner, his tongue flopping out of the side of his mouth. He rushed up to Sesshoumaru and promptly sat down on the man's feet, flattening his ears to his head as he gazed at the darker, younger Taisho brother.

Kagome appeared a moment later; her eyes were trained on the ground, watching for uneven places, her steps measured. She glanced up as she called for her dog, a look of exasperation melting into one of surprise. She stopped short upon seeing the two men, caught in their intense gazes.

The breeze blew through the foliage, gently swaying the leaves of the trees and the bamboo, spilling light onto her face. She seemed fatigued, her skin pale, the lines under her eyes longer than they had been in Sesshoumaru's most recent days of knowing her. The sudden and phenomenal power she had experienced had left her weak. Even her smiled was tired.

As he studied her face, for the briefest of moments, Sesshoumaru allowed his thoughts to wander. Out in the light she seemed a curious mix of both youth and years. The flashes of humor and intelligence reminded him of a child's disposition, full of life and devilry. It was a spark of exuberance not unlike that in his brother.

And it was in that moment, as he gazed upon her, that Sesshoumaru felt he hardly knew her.

His brother shifted, sensing Sesshoumaru's silent wish to be left alone with the girl. The younger man stepped out of the clearing and to the path, passing by the young woman, casting her a fleeting glance, one she caught and held, easily, never wavering, unblinking, a quiet dominance asserting itself in an invisible shield around her, before he continued on his way, disappearing around the bend.

Kagome had watched him, her gaze following the stranger until he vanished; thereupon she turned curious eyes to Sesshoumaru. When he did not speak she meandered up the small incline and stopped at a respectful distance.

He was somewhere else, lost in a land of thought, drifting aimlessly, settling on no one memory in particular. The girl waited silently, seeming to contemplate the almost topiary like qualities of their surroundings.

Sesshoumaru sighed heavily and turned to the girl.

"I have an idea, Miss Higurashi, if you will indulge me." His deep voice was quiet and subdued. It was not often that he spoke with so little force; to him, it almost felt gentle, which was unnatural, but in that moment it was neither alien nor strange to act in such a way.

She nodded, regarding him with interest.

"Your last vision seems to have left you with some undesired side affects. Perhaps there is a way to help with that. Given that it is a good possibility you will experience more of this prescience, I believe it would be beneficial to keep any sickness or injury from occurring to you. There may be times when we do not have the luxury of resting for days."

The girl snapped her fingers at Ajax, effectively releasing the man's feet from their captivity. He scowled, benign mood evaporating into petulance.

"Alright. If you think it's wise, why not?"

She looked back up at him and smiled when she saw the severe lines carved into his face.

"Do not tell me that the simple act of snapping one's finger's is all that it takes to rid one's self from that wretched beast."

Her smile was coy. "Well, one could say that. But one might also find it in one's interest to know that Ajax usually only listens to me and only when he feels like it." Besides," she said quietly, almost absently, "I think you like him." Her smile widened as his brow furrowed. "What did you have in mind to help me?"

"Meditation."

Her face betrayed both her surprise and disbelief. Sesshoumaru did not wait for her to voice her thoughts for he simply took her hand and led her into sun filled glade, pulling her down to the soft floor of the earth, to instruct her and hope that it would help them both, and would, maybe, if his assumptions were correct, further their advantage, taking them one step closer to defeating the demon.

* * *

It had been a long time since he had set foot in the mansion.

He thought back, running through the years in his mind. The only trouble with remembering past events was the way time wove in and out, confusing, intricate, ever changing. When he tried to separate events into years, place them in a specific time, he found that the memories became even more confusing. He preferred to judge time simply by its events, and not by its numerical date.

Turning a corner he followed the hallway, bent on releasing some of his emotion in a productive way. There was none better than training.

He walked through the sunlight that streamed through the open windows; his steps confidant, self-assured.

That was until his most hated memories surfaced.

Underneath his confident exterior there was an uneasy swell, undermining his swagger and natural insolence. The part of him that feared the power, that felt the need to bow to its authority, was slowly winning out over his presumptuous attitude.

He swallowed the knot in his throat, hoping his travels would not have been in vain.

His brother's power was awe-inspiring. It was colossal. And being in his presence once more was enough to remind him of their fight, of the momentous severity of their circumstances.

It was easy to be self-assured in the middle of Tokyo, surrounded on all sides by nothing but humanity and machinery. It was simple to blend in and be nothing but a face in the crowd. It was almost too easy to forget the past, to forget where he had come from, to forget even, what he was hiding from.

His older brother was not the only stubborn and proud Taisho.

No. He had inherited those characteristics, too.

He had not wanted to live in anonymity, had not wanted to hide behind his brother's power, to give up his name and his identity. He had not wanted to lose everything that was important to him.

At times of deep contemplation, he was able to recognize his faults and shortcomings, sometimes even see his own tendency toward brash behavior and poorly thought out actions.

In those moments, he understood why he had been expected to hide with humanity, to forsake the magical world he had been born into.

It was not always simple, to exist in that bustling metropolis. He was something separate, of both worlds and therefore of neither. He could not exist in his brother's realm of life as comfortably as his sibling, the former Warlord of the West. It was not in his nature or his blood. But he could not live among mortals and be comfortable either. He could live among them and slip in and out with relative ease but that was entirely different than belonging.

They were not looking for him, the humans. They were not his enemies. They did not remember the ways before their machines and their practicality. That world of the fantastic, for them, had died, and was confined to fairytales and bedtime stories.

Yes, amongst them, he was safe.

But not comfortable.

It had often felt as if he needed to scream, to claw his way to the top of the crowd for a simple gasp of fresh air, to feel the age-old dirt beneath his feet instead of the manufactured concrete, the byways and pathways that stretched for miles, teeming with people.

And he missed her.

He ached for her.

To stand in the middle of the city, surrounded by life was simply a reminder that he was missing part of his.

But she was gone.

Or she should have been.

How he wished she were.

He wished she could move on.

Wished she would do so for both of them.

That she was still in the world, existing, though hardly so, was almost worse than the thought of her immanent demise.

Thoughts of her left him empty, the dull gnawing pain of a long lasting grief suddenly springing to life.

Seeing the open doors before him, he restrained his body from its desperate desire to run. When he stepped foot inside the expansive room he ripped off his leather satchel and shirt, ferociously unsheathing his sword before throwing the scabbard to the side, intent on driving all thoughts of the past from his mind.

With a single upward twist of his sword he dispelled the image of her face. With a downward curve he had shut away the memory of the city. Sliding the perfect metal through the air in front of his eyes erased the memory of the days he had lost and of the days he had wandered, alone.

No. This was not a battle for one brother.

It was for both.

They had earned their vengeance.

And vengeance they would get.

* * *

Kagome could feel every blade of grass, every leaf on the tree, every fiber in the stalk of bamboo. She was the wind, the flashes of sunlight, the creatures crawling through the grass. She was serene, empty, head devoid of all thoughts.

All thoughts but one.

No matter when she tried to clear her mind, be that when she was falling asleep, walking through the woods, or reading the histories in the library, she could never quite empty herself of thoughts concerning the man known as Taisho.

She could feel him there sitting next to her, silent in his own meditative state, his breathing even, body held in perfect stillness.

Her almost calm nothingness was broken as she let her thoughts wander over the mysterious creature sitting at her side.

Something had changed between them. She could not readily say what it was, this shift in their demeanors. Nor could she say when it had occurred, although her mind turned to her memories of their most recent fight, their enemy's face flashing in her mind's eye.

It seemed that in the midst of perils, she was better able to understand the man, better able to understand their relationship, and even more capable of understanding herself.

There was a disconnect between the Kagome who sat in the glade, emotional, angry, striving for something more, and the Kagome who stood before he enemies, fearful, oh yes, she was fearful, but that Kagome was not a coward.

She did not cower.

She wouldn't. She couldn't.

Even though she had wanted to. Desperately so.

Upon her thoughts of courage in the face of adversity, her mother's face appeared, smiling, streaks of colorful paint drying on her cheeks, rainbow hues dotting her dark hair.

Kagome's heart twisted painfully and she swallowed the jagged sob that welled up in her chest and throat, constricting her airway. She had always admired the grace at which her mother comported herself. She was calm, able to handle her emotions, to maintain control even in the most dire of situations. It was only on rare occasions that Kagome felt she emulated her mother, and in those moments she felt the absence of the gnawing loneliness that had plagued her for years.

But the quiet ability to face and survive danger was a feeling that had invaded her most recently, when she was faced with life and death, enemies, and battles, a calm wellspring, underneath all of her fear and twisting emotions that gave her a bravery reminiscent of her mother.

She was certain that was the reason she had survived the grip of the demon and the power of the tree.

The courage she experienced in those situations made her feel a sense of remorse and disappointment as she reflected on other times, times when her calm and composure left her.

She let out a ragged breath, expelling the tears that threatened to flow from behind closed eyelids, already gathering on her eyelashes, ready to spill down her cheeks.

She waited for the beating of her heart to slow, the sweat on her hands to dry, before she gathered her thoughts, and finally, when she was calm enough, she opened her eyes.

Next to her, Taisho stirred, sensing her lapse in meditation. A moment later, his eyes had parted, golden irises blinking against the sunlight. He turned to her, regarding her with careful precision.

She stood slowly, and turned her back to him, in desperate need to be alone.

"I'm sorry. I lost my concentration."

Behind her, the man rose with little effort, his gaze boring into the back of her head, a fine line creasing the skin in between his brows.

"It is of no matter. We will attempt it again. Tomorrow."

She nodded absently, crossing her arms over her chest, her face carrying a pained expression. The man appeared next to her, and she fought back the wistful knife that plunged into her middle. She wanted to turn to him and say, with conviction and force, that she did not need him and that he had best stop trying to dissect her in that quiet way of his, pretending to be staring at nature, when in fact, she knew very well, that he was focused on her.

But she didn't. She couldn't bring herself to.

It seemed ironic then, that a man whom she hardly knew seemed to care about her well being. Sure, she conceded, his motives were selfish, or selfless, depending on how one looked at it, but in an instant where she felt so completely empty, it didn't much matter why he cared. So long as he did.

At their feet, a sleepy corgi stirred, rolling onto his back, hoping for attention.

A small smile graced the girl's features and she cast a sidelong glance at the man.

"Did I ever thank you for bringing him here?" Taisho chose to respond with silence, his face impassive. "I thought not." She paused and reached down to scratch the tubby tummy of her most beloved pet. When she straightened she looked up at the man, shielding her eyes from the weeping sunlight with a hand. "Thank you."

For a moment, he simply stood, eyes trained on her face, flashing back and forth, as if to read her. Finally, after an eternity of silence, he nodded imperceptibly. "You are welcome."

Kagome sighed and dropped her hand. "I think I'll go rest now, if that's alright. I'm sure you want to see to your guest."

"You may do what you please," his reply was quiet and she could still feel his eyes on her face.

Kagome nodded, and slipped past him, to make her way down the path. A deep voice rumbled from behind her, stalling her walk.

"Miss Higurashi, are you well?"

She nearly laughed. That was twice in one day. She didn't need to speculate why he chose to word it as such; her mind already knew the answer. He didn't know how to make things better. Not in that way. He was not a man to heal. He was a man who would destroy, and thus, heal all.

But what good ever came from blood, she wondered, defeat slipping over her like a like a heavy cloak to settle about her shoulders and back, weighing her down.

Despite the void threatening to engulf her, she cast eyes over her shoulder, to wonder at him, silently, from a suitable distance. His face was so much like that of the stranger, the sudden dark haired guest, their eyes nearly identical, their air of confidence and power and supremacy unmistakable.

Family, she thought, as she recalled her mother, her stepfather, and the dog lounging in the sun.

"I miss my family."

She glanced at him once more and then quickly turned and headed down the path, afraid that if she stayed, she would have to speak and explain, recall the pain, the loss, the grief. And even though the sun cascaded over her, brightened the world around her, Kagome could take no enjoyment in it. And so she passed on, a different sort of cloud, alone in the sunshine.

* * *

Sesshoumaru pushed open the door to his study, vexed, at a loss for words. Kagome. Kagome. Kagome. Kagome. Why was it that every time he came close to getting inside her head she crawled away, ran away, stalked away? He understood her emotions, knew what they meant, could read her thoughts on her face, could worm his way around her, tease her, frustrate her, but he could not, could not figure out why. Why did she do things the way she did? Why did she seem like an open book one moment and a puzzle the next? Why was she Kagome? What was she hiding behind those damned green eyes?

But, before he could puzzle himself into an angry stupor, his gaze fell upon a figure, lounging in his chair, dusty black shoes on the spotless wood desktop. Abruptly, all his musings skittered, like dried leaves in a blustery wind, back into the corners of a sharpened mind.

"When I said we would speak later, I meant at a time when my anger would not be readily incised. Go amuse yourself, I'm sure with your limited capacity you are perfectly capable of finding something to keep you occupied until I feel like dealing with your absolute inability to follow my requests."

Amber eyes flashed in annoyance. "Commands. They are never requests when they are from you, Shou."

Sesshoumaru walked toward his desk and his younger brother slipped out of the seat, quick enough to avoid the former warlord's anger, but not so quick as to not be considered defiant. The man sat, brushed the dust off of the surface top and pointed sharply at the chair across from the desk.

"Sit."

The younger man did so only betraying a minute sense of his worry, manifesting itself in his youthful face.

"Shou, I-"

Sesshoumaru looked up from the desk, the emotion on his face silencing his brother more effectively than any chastisement could have. "You have chosen to disobey my requests. My commands, if you will. In doing so you have not only placed myself, but you, the Protector, and my weapon in danger. I need to know, right now, if you believe you will be unable to follow orders in the future."

There was a stunned silence. "What? Do you mean I can stay?"

"Answer the question," He rumbled, the air began to swirl and the younger brother nodded.

"I'll follow your orders."

Pleased with the quick response he leaned back in his chair and threaded long fingers together. "Good. What do you want?"

"I want to be apart of this. It's my fight, too."

Sesshoumaru considered his sibling's words, weighing his options, remembering the past, and thinking of the possibilities. After some moments of quiet contemplation, he addressed the other man. "Very well. Despite your penchant for trouble making I will not deny what is rightfully yours. The Taisho family has a score to settle and I will allow you to take part." A dark head bowed in gratitude. "You will, however, understand when and where you will be involved. You will not be a renegade. You will not, under any circumstance, come under the misguided belief that you can tackle this alone. You will always submit to my authority and my plans unless I deem your input more beneficial than my own. I can assure you that will not happen often, if ever. If there is a repeat of your rebellion, you will not be a part of the hunt and you will not fight. I cannot afford a half member in my alliances. I cannot afford for you to fall into the wrong hands. They will take every opportunity to try and kill you. You know this. I must know that if your strength fails, you will not fail to follow my orders."

His brother watched him, eyes holding nothing but solemn understanding, something that Sesshoumaru had never expected from the perpetually youthful and seemingly young man. "I understand."

"You had best. This is not just about our vengeance. This is about destroying the demon and keeping the girl and the sword safe." He watched his brother for a moment, waiting for a sign that he understood, agreed, and would not interfere, would not let his anger get the better of him. The dark head nodded again.

"About the girl…"

Sesshoumaru regarded him with ice and stone, his eyes narrowing, gleaming in suspicion. "What about her?"

The man across from him shifted nervously, looking away from his older, more self-assured brother.

"Where did you find her?"

Sesshoumaru lowered his hands and thought for a moment, deciding where or not it would be prudent to divulge everything that he knew thus far. His thoughts drifted to the girl's desire to know, to be informed, and the reactions that followed his decisions not to inform her.

His brother, if he were to be involved, had a right to know. Just as Kagome did. This thought echoed in his head for a moment, before he brushed it aside. To share too much could be detrimental. He would reveal… but only on his own terms.

"I found her in the states. The sword led me to her. She was working at a small private museum as an assistant of sorts." He recalled the day she had run, quite literally, into him. A small smile threatened to break his severe countenance.

"And she just came along with you? In less than a week you were back here?" His brother was incredulous with is disbelief.

His lips parted in an abstruse smile. "Yes."

He did not find it judicious to inform his sibling that she had accepted her responsibility readily, that she had surprised Sesshoumaru in her nobility, her agreement to shoulder the difficult task, to walk the perilous road.

But he did remember the sentiment in her eyes, as she leaned against the door, his arms to either side of her, forcing her to make a decision, to accept her involvement, her life. Defeat had flashed in her eyes, or so he had thought. But as time had passed and he had time to contemplate her, both her decisions and actions, he realized that it was not defeat that he had seen.

No. It was something entirely different.

It was resolution and acceptance.

The man looked up as his brother spoke again, only catching the last of his sentence.

"…all of your power then?"

Sesshoumaru leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk, folding his arms over one another. "What of my power?"

There was an annoyed exhalation of air. " I asked if she had given you back the sword and your power. Just like that?"

The man hesitated before speaking. "She gave me permission to wield the sword, though I do not know if it was a conscious effort on her part. My power, however… still eludes me."

The silence was thick. He looked into his younger brother's face to see a dismayed shock.

"What do you mean it eludes you?"

Sesshoumaru felt his ire rise at the dubious question. "Did I not make myself clear?"

His brother stood suddenly, thrusting the chair back across the floor, his movements quick and angry.

"This is bad, Shou. I thought… I thought we would be ready to move, to kill the demon. I thought your power would be back once you had the blade in your grasp."

Sesshoumaru stood slowly, unfolding his long limbs and legs to stand at his full height, regarding his inferior with disdain.

"You presume that I do not understand the enormity of our situation? That I am not fully aware of the implications? Do you presume me a fool? I do not need you to spell out the misfortune in this situation. I believe that I am more capable of comprehending the events than you. I have the girl and she is the key. I was named the master once again. It is only a matter of time before I regain complete control."

His brother glared at him and turned away, pacing.

"How much control do you have?" Sesshoumaru did not dignify the question with an answer. The other Taisho brother turned to face the silver haired man. "Alright, fine. How much don't you have?"

The warlord was thrown backwards in time. A feral, wild side began to knock at its gates, locked doors in his mind, bringing with it, the most sweet and disastrous recollections. Power. Sorcery. Animal instinct. Passed down through the ages to rest in the one of solitary survival. The last of the pure. The last of the line.

And when that flicker of memory crawled back into its cage, Sesshoumaru was left feeling more mortal than he had in ages. He felt nothing but exhaustion a heavy weight at his ankle, at the base of his skull, chaining him to his helplessness. But it would always be there, that descending power. And that was his life, his long, drawn out existence.

"I inadvertently changed into my true form and could not revert to my human shell." He said this wearily, unable to summon the warlord, the killer, to deliver the lines. The younger man's jaw fell open, his eyes wide with their shock. "Shou…" He ran a hand over his face, his amber eyes darting around the room as he tried to process the information supplied. Finally, his bright gaze landed on the stoic figure. "Has it become any easier since you first received the sword?"

Inside, past the stone and emotionless front, he sighed. "In the past few days I have noticed a slight change. More of my power has returned and a minute part of it is more readily controlled."

"Do you know why?"

He turned and looked out the large window, his eyes traveling along the sky, the setting sun, and the painted clouds above the trees. "I believe it has something to do with the girl. She is having visions. Her first was of the Shikon Site. Her second, while we were there, after we fought the demon and his ally, Fujin. The ancient tree planted by the wood spirit transferred its power through her and commanded her to use the sword and the land to defeat the wind clan leader." He cast a rueful look at the other man. "She blew up the cliff face." His sibling moved to stand beside him, shaking his head in astonishment. "After the power left her she had a vision of the northern plains. I believe that is where the forest kami disappeared to many years ago."

"You think the wood spirit's tree gave the girl the vision. How does that relate to the sword? And for that matter, how in the hell did she wield so much magic? I felt her aura, it was strange, but it was not that of a priestess or a miko. It was not even that of a mage. By all rights the power should have killed her."

Sesshoumaru laughed darkly, "Though it pains me to say it, I do not know what the connection with the wood spirit and the sword could be, nor do I know what the girl is, nor how she survived. I know very little about her. But I do know that she still has power over the blade and can, if she chooses, relinquish my rights to it. She did so, on accident, several days ago.

My arm was injured in our initial fight for the blade. When I received healing, she felt the pain that coursed through my arm. It ached until I applied my own healing magic to her. She told me that she could even feel my approach, see glimpses of my whereabouts, but this strange connection has since faded. I still, however, believe she has a measure of control over the blade."

His brother was quiet, and he turned away from the window to lean against the wall, crossing his arms over his dark jacket. "That's why you had her meditate. You want her to gain control so she can access her visions and her power over the sword."

He glanced at the younger man, impressed with his newfound perceptibility. "It is my hope, yes."

"What's her name?"

An image of the girl, walking beside him, her high heels clicking noisily, explaining the origins of her name, flashed into his mind. "Kagome Higurashi."

"She doesn't look Japanese."

Amusement surfaced then, remembering the blank look that crossed her face whenever Japanese was spoken in her presence. "She isn't."

The men descended into silence, each thinking deep thoughts, mulling over the impending future.

"When were you planning on making your next move?"

Sesshoumaru had been wondering that very thing, earlier that day. After his brief interaction with the girl, upon seeing her in such a disconcerting light, he had decided it would be best to wait, if only for a few days, before setting out again.

"Three days. I do not wish to exhaust her. But, I do not desire to stay here for long, nor do I want to stay out in the wide world for extended periods of time. Although my enemies have come to the very edges of my borders, the demon's spies included, I know that this is the safest place for her to recover. The power of the tree left her quickly, and drained much of her physical and mental strength. I assume that if she has the capacity to carry power of that magnitude it will happen again. I want her stronger. She will meditate and rest before we leave." The tone behind his words changed, becoming commanding in their nature. "You will not come with us on this journey."

His kin stiffened and opened his mouth to argue, but seeming to remember his agreement, he stalled his words, hunching his shoulders and removing his eyes to the ground.

"Fine," he responded stiffly, though quietly, mumbling into his chest.

"I have business to attend to," Sesshoumaru stated evenly. His brother nodded and unfolded his arms, casting him a fleeting glance before moving to the door. "Does she know about you? About us?" The question hung in the air and when the younger brother received no answer, he nodded his understanding. "I won't give it away then. But," his voice was soft; "we can't keep it a secret forever. She needs to know. She'll find out." He reached then, his hand curling around the doorknob, twisting the metal, pushing open the door. Before he crossed the threshold, the powerful being behind him spoke.

"I saw her, Inuyasha."

Inuyasha Taisho froze, and then his head bowed to his chest, and his older brother stared at his back, both men unmoving, their thoughts centered on a quietly beautiful woman, alone in her temple.

Inuyasha hovered for a brief moment in time and then stepped through the doorway and gently closed the door behind him, leaving an older, wiser, wearier brother to contemplate his decisions and their ramifications, despite his utter inability to change the past.

* * *

Kagome padded into the kitchen, her eyes not quite adjusted to the shadows of the night. Despite her exhaustion, she could not, for the life of her, fall asleep. Every time she closed her eyes, nightmares surfaced, chased her in a circle, with ripping claws and gnashing teeth they fought for her, leaving her with the desire to never, ever, close her eyes again.

She reached out through the dark, her fingers searching for the light switch. Fighting a slow tide of panic, unable to see through the black velvet of the room, she fumbled with both hands, irrational fears trembling through her fingers and limbs. Her hand connected and the florescent light flickered and turned on, a glow settling through the area. She let a tortured breath escape her lungs, relaxing, as she saw nothing but the empty, pristine kitchen.

No demons, no wind spirits, no nothing.

Well, that wasn't entirely accurate. There was an industrial size refrigerator, looming against the wall, beckoning her name, calling for her to have a midnight snack. But, given that her body had still not recovered from her most recent adventure, she politely declined her subconscious call to eat her way out of desolation.

Although, she was reasonably certain a giant piece of chocolate cake would go a long way to mending her broken soul.

Instead, she settled on a glass of water and a quiet moment to think. But, before she could even sort through the whirling musings of her head, a slight disturbance at the doorway caught her attention, and her eyes immediately went to the shadowy entrance way.

It was him, the rider, the stranger, the insufferable one.

She narrowed her eyes as he stepped into the kitchen, watching her with measured curiosity.

"Hi," he ventured slowly, hesitant, calculating.

Kagome leaned against the counter top, running a finger around the water glass, sizing him up.

"Hi." They stood still, watching each other, dislike, and in his case, distrust slowly filling the space in between. "If you are looking for your gear, it's in the driveway."

The resolve teetered for a moment, calculations drawn up short as her words sank in. "You left it out there?"

She shrugged and sipped her water. "I am not a maid."

The man meandered a few steps closer, irritation oozing into the air. A satisfied Kagome held her smile at bay, mentally chalking up a point for herself.

"My mistake."

His voice was casual, but she could hear the grit inside, the crack of a temper. Kagome found this quite interesting, and filed it away for later use. Or, she thought, watching the man, for immediate use.

Kagome, recently prone to her own temper, could recognize the same thing in the man before her. Man… or boy. He seemed to be both, somehow.

"Yes, it was your mistake."

He scowled. "You're Kagome."

"Last I checked." The man snorted and moved to perch on a stool, not far from where she stood, gazing absently into her water glass. "And who are you?"

"Ash Taisho. The brother of your… whatever the hell he is to you."

Brother. Kagome found this curious, that Taisho should have a brother, one so unlike him in mannerisms.

"Protector?" she supplied nonchalantly. He shrugged in response.

She cast him a veiled glance. He was tall, lean, and she assumed a warrior like his brother, given the sword she had seen strapped to his back. From the definition of his form, he seemed to be in the peak of physical health, young and exuberant. Though, she mused, catching a glimpse of a line in his forehead, there was a deceptive quality about the sparkle in his eye. She had a feeling he was much older than he looked, the absence of wrinkles and age lines in his youthful appearance giving her no indication of his age, however old or young it might have been. And given that he was Taisho's brother, she could reasonably assume that Ash also possessed a phenomenal longevity.

He was handsome, like his brother, though in a different way. Where Taisho was stoic and reserved, almost regal in his mannerisms and composure, Ash seemed to be the more light hearted of the two, the one who relished in the chance to cause mischief. She could see seriousness in him though, and this ability to both sense and see his emotions was almost strange. She had been living with a man who betrayed little and had become increasingly accustomed to his stoic ways, and had nearly forgotten that most people were easier to read and understand.

What interested her most was not his resemblance to his brother, not his handsome features; rather, it was the strange necklace around his neck. She could sense its importance and its power, a dull but persistent presence in the air that surrounded him.

The jewelry was made of beautifully crafted wooden beads, threaded on simple twine, the length of the strand wrapped three times around his neck. The wood appeared to be aged, well worn, as if it had seen the effects of time, but some force was holding it together, keeping the wood and thread from falling apart with its age. She could make out the barest of markings, etched or whittled onto the tiny mahogany colored spheres.

Ash caught her glance and reached a hand up to the beads, touching it with care. He wrapped the slack around a finger, pulling it away from his neck, holding it up for her to see. "It's a Buddhist rosary. Prayer beads."

"I see," she murmured softly, leaning forward to get a better look. "It's beautifully made."

Ash looked down at it, his face morphing into one of tired amusement. "It was once. Not any more. It's been a bit used." He sat a moment, staring down at the beads, lost in his own thoughts.

Kagome stood quietly, studying him, trying to grasp his personality, the way he worked. She could not help but wonder if he was going to be around, if he was going to join them in their epic quest.

Ash looked up suddenly, as if he had come out of a trance, dropping the beads. His eyes caught and held hers, and seriousness plagued his face, rendering it older, darker, more like his brother's.

"Why did you agree to do this?" The suddenness of his words caught her off guard.

She pulled her gaze away from him and studied the floor, watching as the dull light form the kitchen created a glare on the spotless tiles. She sighed and readjusted her gaze to his face, forming her words carefully.

"I don't think I had much of a choice."

A harsh laugh startled her, and she nearly dropped the empty water glass.

"Don't be absurd. There is always a choice. Why didn't you tell my brother to go to hell? I know I would have." His eyes were narrowed as he watched her, unblinking.

Kagome stiffened, standing straighter, not at all unnerved by his shift in attitude. After all, she had seen worse changes in people, faster, quicker, and angrier.

Her eyes glinted with steel. "I don't think that would have persuaded him. Besides, I had nothing better to do. Why not save the world?"

"You willingly put yourself in all this danger? For what? I don't think many young women would so avidly volunteer for the job."

Kagome felt the flicker annoyance as she caught the undertone in his voice. His thinly veiled disbelief not only startled her, but also, surprisingly, took a stab at her honor, leaving her confused and tense, a defense already rising to her lips. She felt the air in her chest constrict, her hands clammy as she met the man's eyes.

"Maybe not many would. But I do know that I was brought up to do what I could and if this is it, then so be it. You don't have to understand, and I wouldn't expect you to. I can hardly fathom my own actions, let alone this new world I've been hauled into. And seeing how we have only just become acquainted, I would also not expect you to understand my motives or my choices."

She laid the glass down on the counter, intent on leaving before the conversation became even more strained. She had only reached the door when his voice reached her again.

"Kagome." She turned slightly, pausing, waiting, more tired now than she had been before. "Why did you give everything up? Friends? Family?"

The girl's heart wrenched within her chest, and she reached trembling fingers up to her hair, tucking it behind her ears, pulling it away from stinging eyes. She cast him a furtive glance before facing the darkened doorway again.

"My family is dead, I hated my job, and I had no friends. I didn't give up anything."

And that's when it hit her. She hadn't given up anything.

Nothing.

Doors burst forth, realization dawning, manifesting itself in painful guilt.

Taisho… he'd saved her, protected her, offered her a chance to do what no one else could, and he was paying her. Her shoulder's drooped as her disappointment and guilt nestled inside her heart and head.

No, guilt wasn't the right word for it.

She felt ashamed.

Where had Kagome Higurashi gone? Where had she lost herself in her anger? And oh, that anger. It had nothing to do with Taisho. Nothing.

Memory of her mother, her family, gone from the world.

And Kagome realized that she was not angry at Taisho. She was angry at those things that she could not change.

Death. The demon. Evil.

Dare she even say fate?

She wrapped her arms around herself and stepped into the hallway, feeling as if she had just forcibly removed her middle and there was nothing that could fill in the gaping hole.

Had she chanced another look at Ash, she would have seen the remorse that twisted his own face, the regret that erased the sparkle in his eyes.

He watched her slip into the darkness, his own guilt mounting as her shoulders slumped and she fled into darkness, his eyes remaining trained on the spot she had disappeared into. A shift in the shadows startled him, a luminous figure seeming to emerge out of thin air.

Sesshoumaru stared down his younger brother, who looked away, rueful.

When he spoke, his voice was calm, but it was fricative with a warning, frightening in its intensity. "The betrayal of the past has nothing to do with the girl. If you are suspicious of something or someone I deem trustworthy, we will have problems. Do not assume that you possess greater insight into the purity of a soul than I do. I was not the man who fell for such trickery and deceit, I am not the man who must pay for misplaced loyalties. You will not question my alliance nor hers. She is no one but Kagome Higurashi. Do not mistake her for someone else."

The silver haired being hovered for a moment more, his eyes blazing gold fire, before drifting back into the darkness to fade into the shadows as if he had never existed, was nothing but a dream.

* * *

_damn it all i don't know why that chapter was so difficult... but it was. i hope you like it. i think i will have another chapter up in 3-4 days. if not, it'll be a week at most. hope you liked it. thanks for reading and reviewing._


	18. Unspoken Words

_I just wanted to thank my anonymous reviewers, I see your comments, and i am grateful, and because I cannot thank you individually, I am doing so here, now. So, thank you! I really do appreciate it when you take the time to write encouraging words. So, with that said, thanks for reading and thanks to those of you who review often or have reviewed once or whatever. I appreciate it. Here's chapter 18, it was difficult to write but I like how it ended up, I hope you like it, too._

* * *

**Chapter 18**

**Unspoken Words**

He found her at the koi pond, leaning over the edge, watching the fish, small pieces of bread filling her cupped hand.

"My brother has never been schooled in the art of tact."

The girl jumped, startled, showering breadcrumbs into the water. When she turned to face him, her hand was splayed across her chest, just above her heart.

"You scared me," she exhaled, pressing her free hand to her forehead.

Sesshoumaru felt his lips move of their own accord, curving into a gentle, but altogether cryptic smile. "Apologies."

She waved her hand and pushed hair out of her flushed face. "Don't worry about it. I scare far too easily. What did you say?"

The man felt his smile widen, pleased that she was not angry. This, he thought, was promising. This might, he hoped, be the end of their less than cordial interactions. This, he said to the silent corners of his mind, was a good thing.

She had been quiet and pensive over the days following their run-in with Onigumo and his wind spirit ally, and Sesshoumaru had given her the space she needed in order to think. He could see she was working things over in her mind, calming down, and processing everything that had happened to her.

However, his idiotic brother had not helped her situation. Following Inuyasha's insensitive questions and his ridiculous, unfounded prying, he had ordered his younger sibling to stay away from the Protector, lest he, Sesshoumaru, expel the brash man back to Tokyo.

Inuyasha had made himself scarce, as had Sesshoumaru.

And in that time away from Kagome, the man had fine-tuned his ideas and plots, his experiment.

Control. It was all about control. This plan, this idea, gave that feeling back to him.

A wellspring of dark jubilee rose within him, the strange tantalizing feeling that always swam through his veins when he seized an opportunity to master, to be the authoritative figure he was, to swing events in his favor.

He had accepted that she was needed, that she was strong, willful, defiant, and completely capable of handling everything, or nearly everything, that was thrown their way.

Yes, she had tried his patience at almost every turn, but there were brief moments when she was not infuriating, that he was reminded of why he initially liked her. And the woman that he had met in the hallway of the museum, the intelligent, composed, humorous girl he had first run into, seemed to be regaining control, slowly but surely. And with it, came the potential to tap power, to use it for his benefit.

"I said that my brother is a fool." His face remained bland, through his voice carried a note of dry humor.

Kagome laughed then. She stepped away from the pond, where she had been standing, lost in thought, before he had startled her.

He had watched her there for a moment. It had been two days since they had spoken at length, and he had taken a moment to observe her. It seemed as if she were ever changing, her myriad emotions and thoughts fluctuating like the power of his sword, morphing into something new.

"What makes you say that?" She asked, trying, and failing to wrestle away a smile.

Sesshoumaru turned away from the pond, his eyes flitting up to the sky, slowly gathering with low clouds. The rain was threatening to fall again.

He began to walk and Kagome fell instep beside him.

"He was unnecessarily rude to you. This is not unlike his normal behavior, but it was my hope that he would at least remember to be respectful toward someone of your stature." Kagome chortled and he looked down at her, his eyebrow raised.

She wore a bemused expression. "Were you snooping again, Taisho? Listening in on my conversation with your brother?" Seeing the severe lines of his face she let out another laugh. "Never mind. What do you mean by my stature?"

"It is not a little thing, to be named the Protector of the sword."

The girl shrugged and slipped her hands into the pockets of the skirt she wore. "I would simply take your word for it, but given that my life is at stake, I can say, unfortunately, that I understand what you mean… I think."

The man ushered her down a path they had never walked together. The greenery around them closed in, the hedges growing high, seeming to form a fence on either side of them. There was just enough room for the man and the girl to walk next to each other, their outer arms snagged against the thick trees, bamboo shoots, and stalks of sturdy grasses.

"I never told you why the sword was so important did I?" He asked, watching her face out of the corner of his eye.

She tipped her head back and squinted her eyes at the sky, her dark pupils reflecting the depth of the rooftop above them, the ever encompassing blue canvas, gathering with grey. "No, you didn't. Not in so many words."

"I gather you understand that powerful magic can be preformed with the weapon, given that it is infused with three powerful types of sorcery." She nodded. "It increases the power of the holder. When used in combination with the wielder's power, its effects are world altering. This kind of power is not easily used, but it is possible."

Kagome turned to look at him, frowning. "What do you mean?"

Sesshoumaru paused, almost hesitant to bestow her with the information. She was handling things well thus far. He had no idea how his next words would impact her.

Remembering his promise to answer her questions, he ventured forth, his words so hefty with their meaning that he almost felt as if he were calling upon his magic to express the enormity of the sword.

"The sword could be used to bring souls back from the underworld."

Kagome's head snapped up and she stared at his profile, her face dark with understanding.

"I see," she responded slowly.

Ahead, the path began to widen, a small wooden structure appearing as the vegetation thinned.

"The weapon is also crucial because it is one of the few objects that can seal away souls, send them to the underworld. Depending on the strength of the enemy, the sword has the potential to dispel them from the earth forever."

The girl removed her hands from her pockets and brought them up to her long hair, twisting it absently, her brows furrowing, eyes cloudy with disturbance. "So, that's why Onigumo wants the sword. He could use it to raise his allies, like Fujin, or if he wrests it away from you, it would prevent you from expelling him from this world." Her gaze shifted to his face and their eyes met. "I don't think I truly realized the potential of the weapon until now." An emotion strangely reminiscent of remorse contorted her pretty features. "I," she licked her lips, and unable to meet his questioning gaze, spoke haltingly, "I think I owe you an apology for my behavior. I-"

"Miss Higurashi-"

She stopped short and Sesshoumaru had to turn and face her, puzzled by her sudden halt.

"Just let me finish. I'm sorry that I was a brat. I didn't mean to lose my temper on however many occasions it was. I'm sure I could've handled the situation and," she smiled then, meeting his eyes, "you, better. You didn't make it easy though and I reacted the only way I knew how given the situation. And, well, I wasn't mad at you really." She looked uncomfortable, squirming underneath his scrutiny. "I was… how do I say this? I was, well, I had a bit of a meltdown and I was angry about other things out of my control. Things in my past, being attacked, which was not your fault. I mean, you have done nothing but help me since you met me." She rolled her eyes and looked sheepish. "With that said I think it would be alright to forgive your brother for any transgressions. He's not the only person who has spoken or acted without thinking, and I am here to prove it."

Sesshoumaru marveled at the creature before him. "Miss Higurashi, you never cease to surprise me," he intoned blandly, his deep voice even. "Do not trouble yourself." And with that, they closed the subject, seeing no more need to discuss it.

The man led the girl to the small wooden hut, nothing more than four wooden walls and a roof, a tiny shelter from the outside. He slid open the shoji screen, leaving the tiny room open to the fresh air.

He descended to the floor and looked toward Kagome, hovering on the creaky wooden steps.

"Once more, Miss Higurashi, before we depart on another journey."

The girl stepped up to him, sitting down in a flurry of skirts, facing the path and the garden, their view of the sky and the earth, once again receiving the tears of the clouds.

* * *

Kagome could hear Taisho's voice, deep and smooth, lulling her into a separate state, commanding her to breathe, exhale, breathe, exhale. After awhile, she even lost the sound of his pleasant tenor, vibrating in his chest and over the fine hairs of her neck and arms.

She forgot where she was, though the steady patter of the rain was near her ears, the light rainy droplets fell to the wooden steps, splattering across her serene face.

This was the fourth time they had meditated together, and it was beginning to be a favorite part of her day. There was nothing quite like the release of all her thoughts and tension, the simple beating of her heart and the presence of only the most stray and inane thoughts.

Distantly, her mind turned down the roads of the future.

She knew that they would be in danger again.

But after seeing Taisho in his element, after seeing his promise play out in his actions, she was not as fearful as she had been.

No. She knew now that they were not just words.

Not when it was Taisho who spoke them.

He would protect her, she could trust in that fact, trust in him.

Expelling a long sigh, she let the last of her thoughts leave her, enjoying the whisper thin sensations of the natural world as they caressed her skin, soothing her tired soul.

* * *

Sesshoumaru wandered along the path, almost aimlessly, his steps easy and unhurried. Through his heavy thoughts he heard the blunderings of the girl, interrupting the quiet evening around them.

Soft curses lit the air as she snagged the bag over her shoulder on a thorny branch. He turned to see her attempt to disengage herself, only to tangle her hair in the high prongs of the spiky bush.

She scowled as she reached upwards and attempted to snap the twig and free her head. This, however, only succeeded in producing more foul cries as sharp pricks bit into her smooth palms.

The amusement this sight brought him was nothing short of phenomenal.

Kagome turned to face him, sucking on the bleeding skin in between her thumb and forefinger. Sesshoumaru debated leaving her there, knowing the visit they were making would go much faster without the clumsy, obstinate, curious girl before him.

Her voice interrupted his internal debate.

"You know, technically, helping me out of this predicament would fall under protecting me."

He stifled a snort. "How is that, Miss Higurashi?"

The girl tugged her hair, wincing as she tangled it further. "You never specified exactly what it was you were protecting me against. Really, this horrendous bush might actually be an enemy… what with these prickers."

Sesshoumaru drew Daishi-sama and sauntered up to her, eyeing the offending bush with boredom. "I fail to see how your entanglements in the innocent shrubbery would warrant a need for protection."

Kagome pointed a finger at him, "It is not innocent! It has thorns and those pricklies are currently wrapped round my hair."

The man, for the sake of time, reached up and sliced the branch, releasing her head from its hold. "Thorns are an adaptive measure, Miss Higurashi. I can only presume this variety of plant is often attacked by young, clumsy, museum assistants, and therefore, I cannot resent it for defending itself."

"Oh, stop teasing me," she mumbled, holding the branch carefully, still wound in her dark locks.

He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, opting to take care of business rather than watch her continue to struggle, however amusing he found it.

It did not take them long to reach the end of the path, the temple in the clearing.

Beside him, Kagome fell silent, her hand dropping from its plight with the tree branch. Her eyes widened slightly at the sight before her. He knew, without her words, that she admired the simple beauty of the sight before them.

Perhaps, if he were a different man, he too could have taken joy out of something so simple as a sunset on an ancient temple, hidden away from the world, lost to time.

But, he could not, he was not that man, and he was especially disinclined to enjoy the scenery given the company they were about to join with.

He stepped over the gate, as he had done on multiple occasions, each reason for his steps different, each spanning across the ages, each as foreboding as the last, as the next.

Kagome followed a moment later and he heard the intake of breath, as she felt magic of the place sweep through her, warn her of the power that lay as a guardian.

It was a subtle echo though, not at all like the blast he received, whenever he had to pass the gate.

His mood blackened.

The priestess stood at the door of her temple, her eyes trained on Kagome. The woman moved, stepping out into the fading light, descending the rickety steps, ignoring Sesshoumaru altogether. As a reflex, his hand descended to the sword at his hip, watching with narrowed eyes as the priestess, her flowing garments flapping behind her, gently brushed past him, to stand in front of the girl, who, at that moment in time, looked like a small, curious child, caught unaware, a stick tangled in her mussed mane.

Kagome surveyed the priestess with quiet eyes, unafraid, curious. Sesshoumaru knew she was feeling, perhaps for the first time ever, a powerful, pure, natural sorcery, that which was only for a certain kind of woman, a certain kind of being.

The priestess stared at the girl, sizing her up, and while Kagome appeared to be uncomfortable, she did not shrink from the gaze.

Sesshoumaru was pleased at that. He had seen lesser men cower in front of the woman before them, and in all of her glory, he could not begrudge her for the sorcery she possessed. No, he was more than willing to admit she had power.

That was not why she made his skin crawl, his hand tighten on the sword hilt.

Kagome waited quietly, locking eyes with the dark haired maiden, waiting for someone to speak.

"You are the Protector."

Kagome's gaze slid to Sesshoumaru and he spoke, his voice nearly deafening in the quiet confines of the glade.

"She does not speak the language."

The priestess did not turn to face him. A clawed hand fisted, the air charging with energy.

He had little time and he would not waste it. He was also disinclined to deal with the woman who he so thoroughly disliked, distained, and distrusted.

The Priestess turned then, and inclined her head in acknowledgement. Sesshoumaru's grip on the ancient metal at his side loosened and the priestess stepped away from the girl, leaving a suitable distance between them, allowing the man to reclaim his Protector.

"I see you heeded my advice." She nodded toward the girl.

Sesshoumaru would have drawn his sword and sliced off one of the Priestess' appendages if he thought it would have maneuvered him around the conversation at hand. As it were, he knew it would only upset Kagome and dirty his blade.

"I had little choice. Therefore, you cannot take credit for the suggestion, seeing as I had no other way of setting out on my journey but to bring her with me."

The priestess stepped away from him, her billowing clothes creating a surreal image about her form. It seemed, for a moment, as the orange light descended into the purple hues of the evening, that the woman were floating, gliding with the air, a majestic and deadly beauty, a tigress in her lair.

"I do not wish to argue with you, Taisho, I was simply inquiring as to the nature of the Protector, and your quest."

The man withdrew his hand from the blade and crossed his capable arms over his chest, even as his muscled still twitched, pulled taut. "If that were the case, you would ask me what I am doing here, assuming, that is, with your supposed intelligence you _could_ relate my sudden appearance to my quest. If you cannot string these simple ideas together, then, by all means, inquire about the obvious, my health, the girl before you who is obviously the Protector, and perhaps even, my thoughts on the weather."

The woman sighed and turned her face to the wind, tossing her ebony locks behind her shoulder. "What do you want?"

"Directions."

Her dark eyes snapped to his face, a momentary flicker of emotion sparking behind a porcelain mask. "Where?"

"I need to know the location of the wood spirit." He watched her face, noting the shadow of sorrow that passed, like a silent cloud, over her countenance and through her body, to age her in a single moment. "You do know." His low voice was almost drowned out by the crickets in the woods, the fluttering of wings.

"I do know. She is in the north." The Priestess looked skyward, her eyes reflecting the beginning twinkling of sullen stars. "Where the mountains and the sea meet the earth and the sky. You should know the way. There is a small village, before you meet the path that will lead you to her domain. You will know by the temple there."

"A little less cryptic instruction would be appreciated."

The woman shook her head, "You know I do not know the modern roads and maps. I cannot offer you much. You will know, you will feel it in the land." She paused, and her eyes re-focused on the girl. "She may be able to detect it as well."

Sesshoumaru turned to collect Kagome, to sweep her off and continue their journey, but he was halted by a sharp cry.

"Wait! Wait a moment. You must know." She walked up to him, meeting his cold gaze, her dark irises flitting across his face. "She is dying, Taisho, she cannot last long. She is held against her will. You will understand when you set foot in that village. Please," the sorrow in her voice was not lost on the man, nor the girl, standing behind them, her emerald eyes suddenly deep seeded in their worry, though she could not understand the words that were exchanged. "If you can, help her."

Cold hands touched his sleeve, chill seeping through to his skin. Roughly, he jerked away from her. "I will do as I see fit. Do not waste your sentiment on me. You know that I do not trust either your motives or your actions."

"Then why are you here? Why did you ask me?'

The man turned and walked toward Kagome, standing frozen, staring at them in wonder, that damn stick still in her hair.

"Because, you have to make amends. And to put the Protector in danger would break your vow, would hinder you from making things right. I know you, priestess, I knew you would tell me what I needed _because_ you vowed to make up for past mistakes."

With that he turned on his heel, wrapping his Protector up in his monstrous powers, his able arms, leaving the Priestess to fall to her knees, overcome with century's worth of grief.

* * *

Kagome stared at the giant spirit gate before them. It was mesmerizing, even in its disarray. Vines of green flowering plants had threaded their way up the aged wood, the sagging entrance to the valley below. Small white flowers dotted the green, sparkling amidst the shadows, overpowered by the extent of the plant. But there they were, the tiny, incandescent petals, fluttering softly in the early morning breeze.

They had traveled over the roads, the twisting turning paths, the miles growing longer, their journey becoming more and more unrealistic to the girl.

She had watched the mountains draw closer, soon to be parallel with the curving paths they sped down, towering above her, the clouds and mists lowering to where she felt that if she tried, she could stretch, stand on the tips of her toes, and just brush the weak, threading tendrils of low rooftop.

They had headed to the far north, the sea closing in, the mountains embracing them, the valleys somewhere in between. Rural villages appeared, settled gently in the arms of the flatlands, the terraced greenery visible between tiny rural huts and rice paddies.

It was altogether beautiful, breathtakingly so.

Had the threat of danger and peril not loomed so close, like the clouds just out of her reach, Kagome would have relished in the opportunity to enjoy a country she so loved. But as it was she could not help but ruin her own good mood by reminding herself of where they were headed and why.

When she had questioned him about the Priestess the man had answered her in monosyllables and she had decided, for the sake of his mood, darkening by the minute, she would wait and ask him again, when he did not seem so apt to rip her throat from her neck.

After many miles and hours, they had found the appropriate village to stop at, to abandon the vehicle that had brought them thus far.

It was dark, the sun had yet to peak over the mountains and through the heavenly mists, wafting in the air above and below them. Taisho had led her through an especially quiet village, taking advantage of the shadows, avoiding those humans who had just begun to rise. They hurried through the dirt lanes, passing humble homes and a small temple.

There, Kagome had felt compelled to pause, something calling to her through the shadows and early morning strain, where the night had not yet relinquished its claim and the morning had not yet realized its hold on the world, the girl stalled, slipping out of Taisho's immediate vicinity, moving to stare at the depths of the temple.

There was something about the earth at that spot, coiling at the base of her spine, running dying fingertips along her skin. It was a feeling of trickery and deceit, one that made her hands clammy and a cold perspiration break out over her brow. Sharp, calculating eyes narrowed as she tried to pick out the feelings that pervaded her mind.

It was not until an impatient man had gripped a small wrist in a mysterious clawed hand that she relented her perusal of the shadowed temple, allowing him to pull her away, though she glared at the inanimate building for reasons she could not name.

But now, the man and the girl stood on the threshold of the valley below, a solitary gate signifying the worn path of the grass, disappearing down a steep incline to twist and weave in the floor of the valley below, vanishing around the curve of two verdant mountains, bordering the flat of the land at her feet.

"You're sure this is the way?" She asked him quietly, still studying the tiny flowers.

"I should be asking you that," he replied shortly, though his tone was devoid of any sarcasm or anger. Rather, he seemed to be a strange melancholy, pensive.

She pondered for a moment, and reached out to trace her fingernail across the yielding, soft folds of the flower.

It was such a delicate piece of nature, nestled amongst the vines that seemed determined to overpower the torrii. She could not help but wonder if the flowers too, would someday be swallowed whole by the strength of the undergrowth.

It was of no matter though; there was little she could do to stall the process of the tangled mass of green. She did not want to rip the vines from the gate, for she did not begrudge them their need of sunlight, and to pluck the flowers from their perch was to kill them, too.

So instead, she removed her fingers and looked up at the curious form above her, both light and dark, staring at the valley below.

"It's the right place," she responded quietly, knowing, almost innately, what lay at the end of the trail.

The man nodded imperceptibly, and took a step across the gate, as if it were nothing but wood and plant, which, she admitted reluctantly, was all it was.

He turned when he saw that she was not following his descent of the path, his eyes curious in the depth of the night, or the dark of the morning, which it was she could not say.

"Coming?"

She glanced at the flowers above her once more, wishing them luck should she not live to see them again.

She turned her body, her mind, and her fate forward and stepped over the gate. When nothing spectacular happened, she resigned herself to whatever lay ahead and allowed the man to help her down the twisting turns of a moderately used road, forgotten with time.

And together, they descended, as only they could, watching their backs and the road in front of them, praying in his and her own way, that this would be a lucky time where they would survive again.

* * *

As was true of his character, Sesshoumaru was silent throughout their day journey in the valley. Kagome had not spoken much either, lost in her own world, her eyes occasionally betraying her worry, or her delight, depending on what it was she focused on.

He did not always notice these changes in her attitude, they were not as easily perceived as her anger, her other quicker emotions. Absently, as he tired to analyze the subtleties of Kagome, he wondered if their meditation had already begun to have a positive effect on her.

Even if their forays into the calming plane did not affect her still unknown abilities, Sesshoumaru was convinced it could do nothing but help in a most general sense. He had never met a person, human or not, who had been adversely affected by meditation.

At the very least it might afford her some control over her emotions, which would be helpful in stressful and dangerous situations. She had handled herself well, thus far, but he did not want her lack of experience to get in the way. He could not afford her to make a stupid mistake because she panicked, because she did not listen to him.

Therefore, it was for both their benefits that they form some sort of bond. This thought struck him as odd, because while he had been absently going about this very thing, he had never really acknowledged this act as imperative. Not being close to her, not forming a kind of relationship. But, he realized, he could not have expected much less. When it came down to what he needed, what _they_ needed, was trust.

From the beginning he had known that he needed to placate her, and do what was necessary to reach his end, which was to wield his sword.

He had spoken to the sword directly, on many occasions, but it had never answered him as it had the night he had asked the weapon if the girl was further needed.

No, it had remained infuriatingly silent.

Even when the priestess had informed him that the sword wanted something from him, he could not bring himself to recognize that it was true.

No, once again his ego had failed to agree with his sensibility.

And even when the girl at his side had asked if the sword and the jewel were connected, he had shrugged offhandedly, and offered a pacifying, though not _wholly_ true answer.

Yes, they were connected. They would always be. And it seemed, now, there was an ever-expanding array of connections. The girl, the sword, the jewel, the tree, Sesshoumaru himself, all tied together, though he knew not how.

Not yet, anyway.

The man shifted his musing to the sky, the sun now high above them, though, through the heavy, misty clouds, it was difficult to tell its position.

He chanced a look at the girl.

She had not complained throughout their journey. Not once. Although, he admitted sourly, the only time she seemed to voice her dissatisfaction was when he refused to inform her inquisitive nature. He should have expected that from her though. After all, had it not been he who had called attention to her intelligence and quick wit immediately upon meeting her? That she would wish to know things should not have been surprising.

He sighed silently, his hand falling to the hilt of Daichi-sama. Perhaps, for his blood pressure's sake, he should not dwell on such thoughts. It only proceeded to raise his ire.

He expanded his senses then, allowing them to travel in every direction at once, as far as he could allow them before he felt the strain begin to tug at the edge, pulling him downward, a beginning spiral, a loss of control.

Ahead, at the base of a mountain, nearly vertical in its slope, he spotted a large tree, suitable for resting under. If his senses were correct, and he had no reason to doubt them, they were not being followed and they would hopefully be near their destination in another few hours.

"We'll rest here," he said, startling Kagome with his sudden speech.

They made their way to the shade of the tree, the girl groaning under her breath as she lowered herself onto the soft grass.

"Do you think we are far now?"

Sesshoumaru leaned against the sturdy trunk of the tree. "I believe we are within range of the area you envisioned." He looked down at the top of her head as she reclined, spreading out her limbs to lie in the grass, peering up at him through squinted eyes. "Perhaps you could attempt to locate the area," he said nonchalantly.

The girl folded her arms behind her head and regarded him from under her long, dark, eyelashes. "Sure. Tell me how."

He smiled then, looking away to gaze at their verdant surroundings.

"Listen? Meditate? I suggest you try to locate our destination in whatever way you can and then tell me how _you_ did it. I am not the one who receives the visions. I should therefore, assume that I am not capable of informing you of how to access them."

Kagome blew her long bangs out of her face, her eyebrows arched in lazy annoyance, though her brilliant eyes remained closed. "Right, whatever you say, Taisho. How silly it is of me to assume a man who has been alive for hundreds of years could tell me how to…Oh, never mind!" She quieted then, and Sesshoumaru watched as the pulse at the base of her throat slowed, becoming a steady beat on her skin, almost mesmerizing in its repetitive thrumming.

The man waited patiently, though his blood surged and bid him to undertake his plot, to continue forward and onward, to persist in their path, even if it meant more wandering, more wearying steps.

* * *

Inuyasha stalked down the hall, his face a dark thundercloud, his movements angry, short, and methodical.

"I am not paying attention to you," he snarled without looking back, though he knew the offending being was still right behind him.

He was going to murder Sesshoumaru when he returned, that was, if another demon or spirit did not get its hands on his brother first. For his own bloodlust, he hoped not.

"Stay here and take care of things. Sure, sure, right Shou, I'll do that." He nearly turned around and screamed, but, instead, he closed his eyes in resignation. To follow through with that impulse could potentially result in his expulsion from the mansion and from his part in the events unfolding around them.

He remembered his brother's words, spoken with a poorly hidden malice and amusement.

Inuyasha was informed, by his smug older brother, that he was not only to watch over the grounds and guard against any malevolent beings or uninvited guests, but he was also to spend most of his time catering to Kagome's damn dog, whatever the hell its name was.

And Sesshoumaru had been serious, oh yes indeed, he informed Inuyasha. Yes, he was to take care of the dog. Sesshoumaru considered the mutt of utmost importance given that the girl's cooperation in Sesshoumaru's quest was largely to do with the presence of the animal. Not to mention, the elder Taisho had sneered, Inuyasha had yet to make up to Kagome for his behavior. Taking care of her dog would be the best way to make amends.

Inuyasha had balked, disbelieving that any person, even a silly young woman, could be so tied up in the well being of her animal.

A dirty one at that.

The stupid corgi had been rolling in the dirt of the garden.

Inuyasha sniffed in disdain before he rounded on the diminutive animal, trailing after him with joyful steps.

"I am not paying anymore attention to you. I already threw your god-forsaken ball around the garden for an hour and a god damn half. That is more than what you deserve!"

The corgi merely sat and swiveled its ears around, regarding the man with a curious look, his dirty fur leaving trails on the carpets and hardwood floors.

The man groaned, throwing back his head. "It's like you know you are tormenting me, you filthy beast." The giant ears flicked forward and the tags around the dog's neck jingled pleasantly. Inuyasha balled his long fingers into fists and cursed himself hoarse. "Fine. I'll give you a bath." He rounded on his heel and continued his previous stalk, although with a different destination in mind. "This had better be worth it. When this is all through, I had best be allowed to sink my teeth into some demons."

He was only answered with a yip by a lovely ball of sunshine and dirt, following at his heels.

* * *

Kagome ran, her hair falling out of its loose binding, her breath like fire in her lungs. She knew Taisho was behind her, easily keeping the enemies at bay.

He had told her, with a smirk, that these adversaries were nothing to worry about and that she should save her trepidation for a battle that really mattered.

But all the same, she thought, blinking the dark strands of hair from her eyes, there was still a measure of fear when one ran with a devil at one's back.

The girl slowed her momentum as she crested the swell of a hill, afraid that if she kept up her pace she would end up sliding through the grass with her face planted firmly in the dirt.

She heard the rush of air as claws and magic extended to cut and cleave and kill, and she imagined the man drawing both swords as well, easily, she hoped, keeping their enemies at bay.

She had been lying on her back, listening, drifting into her meditative state, when a flash of a vision had startled her, sending her to her feet.

Yes, they were close to their destination, but they were also being followed. Taisho had expanded his senses then, but he did not appear to possess skill that she did, the ability to see… things. The future perhaps? The world and events as they could be? The path to follow? Kagome did not know, but she _did know_ that she had felt the pull and the snag of something wrong and evil.

He had raised an eyebrow at her fright, informing her that he had made sure they were _not_ being followed, and she had, in turn, asked him if he possessed the ability to see the future.

His reply, his _resentful_ reply, brought a smile to her sweating face, and she paused at the bottom of the hill, glancing over her shoulder to assure herself that he was still there.

No, he had almost snarled, his teeth flashing in a reply that was just short of a growl, he could _not_ see the future.

Well, then, Mr. Taisho, let's get a move on.

And they had.

The strange beasts had descended from the mountains, slinking low, dark bodies hidden even in the sunshine of the day. When the man and the girl entered the high grass, the adversaries had quickened their pace, falling just behind them. It was Kagome's belief that Taisho let the enemies far too close to them.

They were panthers, or something that resembled a large cat, but there was something twisted about them, something malignant.

After her initial warning that they would be attacked, Taisho had kept his senses on alert, and when they had appeared not only in his line of sorcery, but also in his line of sight, he had very calmly told her to run.

She didn't need him to tell her twice.

Her eyes landed on the figure descending down the hill, the waving grasses only to his upper leg, not his waist, as they were on Kagome.

He cast her a grim smile and she shuddered.

"Are there anymore?"

The man sheathed his sword, made a show of his claws and walked past her, bored. "No." A curious mix of amazement and disapproval built in her mind, instantly giving her a headache. "Are you going to stand there all day Miss Higurashi, or are you going to help me in our quest? The object of our search is just over that hill." Kagome blinked back her surprise.

She hadn't even felt a change in the air, no warning that they were close, no change in the world around her. Apparently her visions and her expanded awareness were not always reliable. Either that, was the wry response in her mind, or, she was distracted by the idea of alien claws and teeth ripping into her flesh and had not felt the change in the land, the welling if power.

She ran after Taisho, tightening the pack over her shoulder, securing it to her person. "Taisho, I don't think I will ever get over these abilities of yours." The man said nothing, but she did catch his sidelong glance and she felt the need to add, "that, and your cocky personality."

A muscle in his jaw twitched.

It was her turn to feel smug.

Good, he wasn't the only one with the ability to infuriate.

Ahead of them, the rolling hills seem to converge, the land raising steadily, an arduous climb to reach the top of the incline.

Kagome felt the quickening of her heart, thundering in her chest, drowning out the sounds of the wind around her. She took a cursory look around. This scene was nothing like her visions.

_This_ scene was almost beautiful.

There were no heavy-laden clouds above them; rather, there was a low rooftop, misty and quick moving, and patches of sunlight streamed into the valley. The mountains were visible in the distance where in her vision she could see nothing but the tumultuous valley of hills. And above them, diving in and out of the misty white cloud cover, swallows and other unnamed birds swooped, their sharp cries carried on the wind, anything but frightening or worrisome.

Despite their brief run in with danger, Kagome was once again, calm, or nearly so, anxious at most, but in control just the same. Thus far, their trip had been relatively uneventful. And Taisho, it seemed, saw no reason why that would change.

Even though his complacent attitude annoyed her to no end, she couldn't help but feel relieved that his arrogance dealt with a subject concerning her safety.

She trailed after the man, making her way, with difficulty, up the swell of the earth, swatting away the swaying grass as it slapped at her legs.

If everything continued to go this way, perhaps she wouldn't have to worry for her life. Her optimistic thoughts were stalled a minute later when Taisho halted.

The gathering of power around his body whipped at his loose shirt and jacket, swirling the brilliant hair about his face and shoulders. She watched in muted horror as the white light lengthened on his fingers, his claws, as she had come to accept the sharp nails, lengthening, flashing in the afternoon light.

"Taisho," her voice sounded strangled, and she worked to strengthen it, though her heart felt as if it could burst out of her chest, and her mind was suddenly someplace far away. "Taisho, what is it?"

The man held up a hand to silence her, and she moved closer to him, her eyes scanning the world for movement, her ears pricking for a sound, for a clue as to what had stalled the powerful man in his tracks.

"There is a strong presence not far to the east. It does not know we are here." She released the breath pent up in her chest. "Yet."

And everything had been going so well.

Fingernails found their way to her mouth, and she gnawed absently, her brows drawn together in worry, waiting for the man to tell her their next move.

He turned to face her. "We may be able to avoid a fight. Come."

He held out his hand to her and she took it, nearly hauled off her feet a moment later as he ran up the hill with ease, dragging the clumsy girl behind him.

She felt like a weight then, an unnecessary tag along, and not for the first time, she understood what a terrible bother she was to the man.

In all accounts, she was potentially holding up the rescue of the world.

Kagome worked the muscles in her legs, searching for a pace on uneven ground. She could not bring herself to ask Taisho what it was he sensed. It was obvious that he wished to avoid the threat. He would have stayed and dealt had it been a small, miniscule, silly menace. That he wished to forestall or completely avoid an altercation was not a good thing for her nerves or her fears, which came roaring to a climax a moment later.

She had only just set her pace to his long strides when he stopped, just as they topped the hill. Kagome, unable to stop her momentum, whipped past him, swinging around to topple into his chest, unable to sever his grip from her hand.

"What's wrong now?" She breathed, staring up at him in desperation.

The man did not look at her; instead, his eyes darted back and forth through the distance, narrowing slightly as they took in their surroundings.

"I cannot move," he finally murmured, his voice low in his throat and chest, hardly audible above the dull roar in her ears.

Kagome stared up at him, hoping he was joking, knowing he wasn't. Around them, the grasses swayed, as the man and girl remained as still as statues, staring at one another.

"Ok. Why can't you move? What should I do?" She flexed her hand in his, attempting to free her fingers, slowly going numb with his grip.

"There are binding stones of a powerful sorcery, littered all around this area. They are meant to keep beings like me from getting within. The wood spirit is being held captive, like you thought, like your vision indicated. It appears that not only is the land bound to her enemy; she is also bound to the land through the stones. If I kill the demon it will kill her. And I do not believe I can move beyond this barrier without using powerful magic, which will either result in a loss of my control, or it will alert the demon that we are here. I want you to take the sword. Take it to the wood spirit, see if you can glean why we were sent here."

"You want me to go?" She was breathless with the very idea of it.

Turning, she looked over the last dip and rise of the hill, unable to see their destination. At the low hum of his voice she turned back to the man, nervous, frightened, worrying about the nameless, faceless beast sulking in the high grass, the man frozen before her.

"Miss Higurashi, take the sword, head just over that hill. Our destination is beyond that rise. You will see it. Go, quickly. Speak with the spirit." He held her in a cold, demanding grip, unwilling to let her argue. "The enemy is still some ways away. I believe it is hunting. If you go now…" His worlds trailed off, his eyes moving to the horizon, blotted by green grass and white clouds.

"What about you?" She murmured distractedly, her hands reaching up to unbind the leather strap at his chest, fingers trembling.

"I will find a way to move," he responded, his tone light and aloof, as if he were suggesting she was silly for asking.

She frowned at him through her nervous anticipation. "Am I supposed to waltz right into the hut and hope nothing bad befalls me?" Her hands fumbled with lack of skill, wrenching the leather strap off his chest, pulling the sword with it. "Let me lift you," she mumbled, curling the ties in her hand, hauling the blade and sheath over her shoulder to dangle across her back. She was afraid to tie it, to keep it too close, frightened, for some strange reason, that in doing so, she would unknowingly dispel the man from his weapon as she had done, once before, unwillingly and unknowingly.

"Yes." Kagome's eyes darted to his face, empty, purposefully stoic. "You have faced enemies before and you will do it this time and again and again. If I did not think you were capable of this, do you think you would be walking away from me with the sword in your hands?" She looked away, her fingers tightening around the leather sash. "Do you?"

Emerald met gold and a small museum assistant, alone on a tumultuous plane, shook her head.

"No."

The man raised his eyes, a dismissal. She hesitated, feeling a peculiar emotion emitting from the statue of white and black and red and gold.

She could not readily name it, and had she more time to contemplate the man behind the mask, the man in possession of the power, she was not sure she would have words to describe it, so she turned and ran, glad that she was away from him, for at that moment in time, the most frightening creature in the empty yawning green expanse was not the devil or his demons, it was the man who had sworn to protect her.

She had descended the last swell when she heard his voice, carried on the whipping wind.

"Miss Higurashi." She looked over her shoulder, wishing with all her soul she could just ignore him, momentarily finding herself wondering if it would be worth it, in the end when everything was through. Her mind could fathom no end. She could hardly understand the space in which she stood, frozen, staring at silver and gold, haunting in its intensity. "I will be here."

Unspoken words.

I will not leave you.

She nodded once and was gone, disappearing into the grass, nothing but a smudge of color against endless green.

When she was over the hill she saw it, settled in the middle of a pooling valley, tiny, small, diminutive.

She ran, ran as if the world were coming to an end, and she the herald of its doom. The black yawning hole stretched, a portal into the tilting wooden hut.

The sword bounced painfully against her shoulder and back, humming, worried at the girl's plight.

She did not stop until her feet carried her up the steps, vaulting her into the darkness of the rickety shack, her vision turning to darkness.

And on the edge of his senses, Taisho felt the pull of the being, sated, full, heading back to guard its treasure, the mother of the earth itself.

* * *

_Alright, there it is, hope you liked it. As always, readers and reviewers are greatly appreciated! Thanks for reading! _


	19. We'll just go on

_Gah. That's all i can say. I'll try and update twice in the next week, but I have finals and will be moving out of my apartment and back home for three glorious blissful months. Anyway. You don't care about that. You do care about this story. Ahhhhahaha... I lied a little, unintentionally, I assure you, when I aid major revelation by chapter 20. I didn't like what i wrote, so I went back and revised. Soon, though, soon, many of your questions will be answered, character development, major plot change, blah blah blah. working on it now. enjoy this chapter. thanks for reading.(oh, also, if you happen to leave anonymous reviews in which you ask questions, you can find the answers to them on my profile page. so from now on, i'll post them there. ok, go read.)  
_

* * *

**Chapter 19**

**We'll just go on**

Inuyasha Taisho scowled as he was sprayed with water.

The dog shook itself free of the last remnants of its bath, panting happily at the perturbed man above him.

"This really, really, had better be worth it."

* * *

Aeron Michaels sighed as he sat in traffic, listening to the belated highway report, cursing the misfortune of settling in a bustling metropolis.

The rain on his windshield did not relent, nor did his broken and dragging windshield wipers alleviate the situation.

He imagined himself examining priceless artifacts, excavating in exotic locales.

Not for the first time, the man wondered if giving up his dreams had been worth it.

* * *

Sesshoumaru Taisho growled as he attempted to move his frozen limbs.

His eyes flickered to the hidden slabs of rock, buried to the neck amongst grass and dirt.

Sealing stones.

His golden irises darted to the east, and he tried again, attempted to free his body from its invisible restraints, and as he struggled, calling forth his power, his mind focused on the girl, somewhere over the hill, just beyond his reach.

He felt the clench in his stomach, the prickling warning along his spine, and as he watched the white glisten of his sorcery thread up his hands and arms, he hoped his quest was worth it, hoped his ultimate fight would be enough to make up for all the mistakes and his inability to plot and plan and save and conquer.

He dearly hoped it would be worth it.

* * *

Far away across the land, nestled somewhere in the great wide expanse of nature and humanity, hidden away from the world, a priestess bowed her head, praying fervently.

Praying for solace.

Praying for life.

Praying for the sword.

Praying for the girl.

Praying for the one she lost.

Praying for the world.

Praying for the man who would save them all, or undo them in the process.

She could only pray so much, could only sell her soul to the brink, before she would wonder if it would be worth it.

* * *

Kaede, the spirit of the western earth, lifted her aged head, tired muscles nearly giving out with the strain.

She felt them pass her spirit gate, rest beneath the tree, run from her enemies, to halt at the barrier.

And the spirit felt one, small and nearly obsolete, or so it seemed when compared to the world at large, make the perilous journey over the last hill, feet moving quickly, gracelessly.

Kaede let her head fall again, despair welling in her tired heart, her aching lungs.

She could only wait and pray, hope that their journey had not been in vain, that the tiny form rushing to her prison would forgive her if she failed, if she unknowingly killed them all.

She only hoped she was worth the price of an innocent life.

* * *

Kagome did not have time to question the last few steps she made. It was far too late for that.

No, even if she died by some unknown power, as she threw herself within the darkened, dilapidated hut, she knew it was far too late to halt, to stop, to throw up her hands and walk away.

No, she could do none of those things.

She was in too deep.

She had already made her decision.

A decision she was regretting, as she crumpled to the floor, her ankle giving out beneath her.

Her forehead slammed into the rough wooden floor, and she wondered, blearily, as the earth tipped upside down and back around, if she could have been less graceful in her entrance to the unknown.

A movement in the dark caused the girl to struggle onto hands and knees, easier said than done, battered and confused as she was.

She lifted her head, her eyes peering through the dark.

The hut was far too small for anything to hide within, but the dark was so pervasive, Kagome could not see her own hand, splayed not more than a hairsbreadth in front of her face. The sounds of belabored breaths reached her ears, and at the sorrowful resonance, her fear all but disappeared. She sat up, still unable to see through the thick blanket of black.

She licked dry lips, tasting fresh blood, almost gagging in surprise and dislike. The sword in her hand hummed distantly, fondly, in remembrance. She built up her nerve, hoping that if she were meant to die on this day, she would already be in the underworld.

"Hello?" Her voice sounded like anyone's but her own, and she wondered if she were hearing herself correctly for the first time in her life.

Indeed, she thought fuzzily, it was funny what one thought in dire situations.

A cracked voice rose to meet her own.

"Child?"

Kagome blinked, feeling the strange urge to correct her, to inform her, well, no, not actually, more like, young adult. But, instead, she said, "Yes?"

"It _is_ you."

There was a moment of breathless relief, followed by a waterfall of confusion. The shadows shifted and Kagome found herself staring into an aged face, lined with time, a million wrinkles drawn in her face.

The spirit woman before her was fascinating, stunning in her appearance. If she had a decade to stay, the girl would have asked the woman the story behind each wrinkle, the laughs, the sorrow, the worry, the fear.

"You know me?" Kagome whispered, drawing her hands to support her weight, hoisting herself off of the dirty wooden floor.

Emerald eyes flashes in the vague shadows of light that danced across the doorway, and the girl felt her shock ripple through icy veins.

Kagome was not vain. Not usually. Only when the occasion warranted it. Which, she thought, was rare, the days few and far between. But those times when she had gazed into her own irises and thought them so bright, dare she say, even beautiful, paled in comparison as she gazed into the sea of green, the pooling of summers and springs, the sway of a leaf, the rustle of the grass just outside the doorway, in the aged face before her.

No, those eyes deserved to be doted on with praise and attention. Those eyes were much wiser and nobler than Kagome's own.

"Yes, I know you, Protector." Was the simple answer.

The air around the spirit kami shimmered, and Kagome thought she felt the turn of the earth, the sprouting of a million trees, the dying of the flowers, the weeping of the earth. And suddenly, in the awe of a power she did not quite understand, Kagome bowed her head; the urge to sob so overwhelming she was momentarily lost in the shadows of the hut, weeping for the magical being before her, the death that was coming to claim her.

"Little one, look at me," the voice quavered with rivers and streams and waterfalls that slowly ate their way upstream, to one day end, as the spirit before her was, slowly fading from the world. Kagome raised her watery gaze, and found nothing but kindness, a benevolence that was the tree, the cliff face, and the earth that had saved her. "Tell me why you are here." Kagome hesitated, formulating her words, language suddenly difficult to master. "Hurry, little one, we do not have much time!"

"Your tree. Your tree gave me a vision of this place and before that," she pulled the sword over her shoulder, "the blade."

The ancient spirit shook her head, and Kagome saw the faintest traces of green in white hair. "My tree? My tree led you here?" Kagome could do nothing but nod. "You wish to destroy the demon." She nodded again, feeling numb. The old woman sighed and looked past the girl, huddled on her floor, her aged eyes searching the tiny hole she had to the outside world, the doorway she could not cross. "I remember those times when he first arose to power. I remember the fear, the days following his defeat, when I waned and became secluded," her voice was the whisper of the wind, the dew on the morning's freshest grass. "Protector, I do not know why the sword and the tree sent you here. I am not a warrior, I do not know the ways of the blade."

Kagome stammered, "But, I- I…I don't know either."

"Show me the blade."

The girl sat up quickly, folding her legs underneath her, grasping the hilt with one hand, the sheath with another. She pulled, ripping the two pieces apart in a blinding flash of misty light. The action startled her, and she nearly dropped the forged metal, so surprised by its display of power.

Gnarled hands reached, covered in a grey kimono, frayed and torn. Kagome hesitated, afraid the sword would retaliate against an unknown power. But even in the moment of worry, the sword sparked, a warm feeling spreading over Kagome's hands, recognition and trust fluttering within the metal. Carefully, gently, as if the spirit would break, she laid the sword across her hands, watching in mystifying awe as the woman pulled the sword close to her face, her eyes traveling over the dark metal.

The sword shimmered in response to the appraisal, its misty magic intensifying.

A frown creased a line, one among many, in the face of the earth goddess. But it left her quickly, a knowing smile spreading over her skin and body, manifesting itself in the world around them, suddenly brighter, suddenly warmer.

"Yes, I remember you." Her eyes deepened with fondness, and Kagome imagined the woman was recalling distant memories, threaded through history and time, perhaps to its beginning, whirling inside one powerful mind.

The blaze of green was suddenly turned on Kagome, showering her with all of its strength. The girl's initial reaction was to draw away, to hide her face, to cower in the magnificence that she would, for as long as she lived, be unable to describe with words.

"Protector, I see your quest before you. The sword tells me as it could be, as it should be, and as it won't be. I see, now, why you were sent here. Why the sword _and _you were sent to me."

Kagome's heart leapt. "Then you can help us?"

The spirit extended her arms and Kagome took back the sword, sheathing it quickly, waiting for the spirit's answer.

The spirit smiled sadly, shaking her head. "Child, the only thing that I can give you is more questions, more riddles and rhymes." Aged eyes filled with regret. "And you deserve much more than that. But, I cannot interfere with fate, even if I can see… even if I _could_ see all I would not interfere. This is not my quest. This is not my duty. It is yours and your Protector's." The woman reached again, and Kagome felt her hand clasped into the warm embrace of exhausted fingers. "You have been given a difficult path to walk. The world tells me so, the sword in your hand whispers it, and your eyes could not weave a truer story."

Kagome wanted to draw her hand away, more than anything in the world. She wanted the woman to stop speaking, to stop adding riddles to the puzzle she was already wound in. She wanted someone, for once in her life, to answer a question, to help her understand, help her to at least grasp the world around her.

"I cannot tell you of the future, though I see many paths and possibilities ahead of you. To tell you would be catastrophic. You desire to wield the sword?"

Kagome shook her head, empty inside. "No, not me, my-"

The spirit blinked, and her eyes lost their focus, "Your Protector, the man who first vanquished the demon." A frown returned, a deep sadness, like an ocean before the storm, churning with the knowledge of destruction, but unable to stop the impending chaos. "You must complete the whole."

A tense silence followed this declaration, and Kagome felt as if she had missed something.

"What?"

The spirit smiled then, a fondness creeping through the despair. "Protector, the whole must be completed. All pieces must align, all powers must be combined, all must be set, on the perfect path. Only then will the demon be truly defeated. Only then… only then will you rest in peace. Only then will all the threads tie into a tapestry, only then will all pieces become a sword. Do you understand?"

Kagome fought her rising panic. "No! No, I don't understand. You are speaking in metaphors. I don't understand what you are telling me!"

"I know, little one. But you are the Protector and it is your duty to preserve the sword, to follow your fate…and one day you might understand. One day you might forgive me for not warning you, for not telling you all that I see. How it will come to pass."

Kagome wrapped the sword in her grip, feeling the return of her reserve, her self-preservation, appearing out of the gloom of despair, the metal and power gripped in her fingers loaning her its stoic ability, its unwavering strength. "I don't know what I would ever have to forgive you for," her voice gentled, "you saved my life, your tree did. We would have died…maybe… If-" She swallowed, digesting the cryptic and foreboding words, "if you can't tell me, then you can't. We'll just go on as we have, and hope we can figure it out."

Brave, lying words. She was lying to herself, in saying those things.

Kagome knew that she needed to leave, soon, sooner if at all possible, but she was afraid to move. She could feel the approach of a demon, a powerful being. She inhaled, deeply, her mother's face once again appearing before her mind's eye.

Be strong.

Kagome felt a tug on her hand, still in the spirit's own.

Their eyes met.

"While I may not be able to lay out your journey, I can give you this. You may start here."

A blinding light exploded, and Kagome was falling, as with all other visions, into the abyss of the sky, to float away on an existence that was not entirely her own, a release from the pain and fear of the world she had come to know, a slice of peace before the wake of something greater came to claim them all.

* * *

Sesshoumaru flexed his fingers, the bones popping as they released their pressure.

If he could regain enough movement, just the bare minimum, he might be able to throw his magic out, and break one of the stones, perhaps both, and shatter the barrier, the enchantment, to collect Kagome and hide her away, protect her from the beast charging toward them.

That would be counter productive though, seeing as how he did not really want to kill the wood spirit, and had no real idea what it took to break the stones, what would happen to him, to Kagome, or to the spirit should he succeeded in breaking free to rampage wildly.

He could feel the magic lacing through the land, could detect where the spirit's aura was bound, how it was chained to the demon lurking the plains. They, the land, the spirit, and the land were so explicably bound together, it would be impossible to make a clean cut and extricate her safely.

He sighed heavily, his eyes moving to the spot Kagome had disappeared to.

He had not wanted this to happen. He had not expected this to happen. As with all things, he had expected that he possessed a great enough ability to handle all situations with little difficulty.

This of all things.

Brought to a halt by mere stone.

Vaguely, he could feel his wounded ego crawl back into his head, settling somewhere out of sight.

This was not supposed to happen.

It was brilliant though.

Through his anger he could recognize that.

But, his righteous indignation was swelling, pervading, flaring parallel to the power in his hands, worming its way up his arms to free him.

It _was_ powerful magic. Enough to bind him, albeit for a short while. Despite that the admission would acknowledge the strength of another, he felt the realization register in his head.

Only humans could readily pass the barrier, as Kagome had just done, some minutes ago.

But what human would seek out a dying earth spirit, one who was guarded by beasts and ancient sorcery, one who was thought to be dead to the world, he wondered.

No one, his mind answered.

No one would come to the barrier.

No one but she.

No one but he.

The enemy was approaching fast.

Much faster than he would have liked.

He increased the flow of energy, grimacing as hot pain flashed, a product of the binding spells. His resolve strengthened. If he had to, he would destroy the stones and the spells with a single wave of his hand. He had to collect the girl, had to find the next clue, had to regain control and move his feet. Had to…before he was forced to do something detrimental, something that could unravel the most ancient magic of the land.

* * *

Kagome wondered if she would ever get tired of floating.

It was not quite like the sensations of flying, not like those dreams she had as a child, where she swooped through the skies, over the mountain tops, down through the forests, over the buildings and rooftops, free, free, free.

No, floating was not quite like those distant memories of flying.

But it would do.

The clouds were not purple, nor any other unnatural hue, rather, they were perfectly white, like satin, like silk.

Vaguely, she wondered where she had seen such perfect colorlessness before and she remembered seeing it on the man who walked beside her, fought beside her, who protected her. She recalled the day she had first arrived in Japan, the way he had angered her, while making her breath quicken, and her stomach flutter.

He had looked so strangely regal in his clothes, all white silk and flowing ends.

But now, he was nowhere around, and she wondered why she cared that the clouds resembled him.

No, that wasn't right. They didn't resemble him at all. They were clouds. Why in the fiery pits of hell, would she be thinking about Taisho when she was floating?

She could not answer that question and decided that the man had gone too far, invading her thoughts to the point where she could not even float in peace.

Annoyed, Kagome opened her eyes.

That's when she saw the tops of the mountains, snow covered and glistening, the mountain passes nothing but strenuous lines on a haggard face of rock and ice.

She could think of no real reason why she should be hovering, hundreds of thousands of feet in the air, over a mountain. Wait, she thought, her eyes adjusting to the mists, those damn white clouds, it wasn't a mountain. It was an entire mountain range.

Her body began to lower, descending through the clouds.

She struggled for a moment, frustrated that she was losing her weightlessness. Sighing, she stalled her fight, and she found herself, quite suddenly, rocketed down toward the peaks.

After experiencing something similar to this, she was able to staunch the alarmed cry that rose in her throat, but only barely did she keep it in check.

She watched, enthralled, as an invisible hand turned her in a slow circle, giving her a perfect view of the mountains in all of their glory.

Her movement halted, and she hovered absently in the air.

Then she saw it, tucked between the giant arches of the earth's hands, nestled in the snow, a gleaming dwelling carved into the mountain.

In her shock she felt her mouth drop open.

The majestic structure was perched, at a gap between the crags and boulders and never-ending ascent, its roof nearly touching the sky, or so it seemed in the bright light glancing off the snowcaps. Pillars of red and gold mounted to the roof, and every level below that, enormous, but dwarfed by the mountain it was built into.

She could hear the reverberation of voices, echoing off the mountains, the smell of incense, the chime of bells, the low hum of prayers, pleasant clack of wooden rosaries, the pad of feet, the rustle of a robe.

Although she was far away, her vision tunneled, and she saw, as if she were standing but five feet away, the shadow of an aged figure, still majestic in the way it was held, bowed by gravity and age.

Kagome could not see his face, but she saw his hands, spotted with age and sun and ancient mars from battles she would never know. And around his wrists, glittering dimly, shinning back at the snow, were gold gilded bracelets, rings around his arms.

Kagome's eyes narrowed, and as she tried to get a closer look but she felt the tug, the call to return to the waking world.

She had run out of time.

But, she realized as the mountains faded into an emerald green gaze, at least she knew the next step.

The wood goddess waited for the girl to rise before speaking. "You know, now?" Kagome nodded, her mind hiccupping and lurching to find the present. "Good. You must go, little one, time draws short."

Kagome stood slowly, her body aching, her fingertips cold, as if she had been standing in the mountains, feeling frigid breeze on skin.

"Thank you." She bowed, compelled to show the spirit the respect she undoubtedly deserved. When she rose, she knew what she needed to ask, though she feared the answer. "You're trapped here. How can I help you? How can we save you?"

The spirit rose to her feet and Kagome helped her, steadying the woman with a hand on her arm.

"You cannot, Protector. You cannot. I am bound here with my enemy. You cannot save me. Though, that you think of me, that you wish to try… I thank you."

Kagome wrapped pleading fingers around the course kimono. "Please, the man I am with can kill your enemy. He will help. I know he will."

The spirit gently disentangled Kagome's grip, pushing her away. "He cannot. To kill the enemy would be to kill me. You must leave. You must."

Kagome only held the woman's arm tighter. "Please, tell me how we can help you."

The smile in her eyes did little to lighten the desperation in Kagome's soul. "I do not know if it is in your fate to save me."

And with that, she gave the girl a gentle push out the door.

Kagome stumbled, missing the steps, turning around to watch the spirit, trapped inside the hut, death crying around the space she did not exist in, everywhere she did not step, leering outside the door, waiting for the day her soul finally gave up its fight.

"I will find a way," she promised, though she didn't know how and didn't know why she would make such a declaration.

The spirit merely nodded. "What is your name, child?"

Kagome took another step back, and her voice cracked as she whispered, "Kagome Higurashi."

"Run, Kagome Higurashi."

And she did.

* * *

She crested the hill just as Sesshoumaru was granted the ability to raise his arms. There was a wide, haunting look in her eyes, her pale face. The man felt the approach of the enemy, like lightning on the earth's floor, quicksilver. It could smell them, it was enraged, it wanted to rip them, tear them, kill them.

Kagome tripped over her own feet as she vaulted down the rise, her right hand stretching out toward him.

For a horrified moment, Sesshoumaru thought she was going to throw herself into his arms. But when her right hand grasped his left, and she ran past him, wrenching the man around, he realized, belatedly, that he would have preferred the first option.

His limbs sprang to life upon her touch, burning from the constriction of the binding stones. It was like fire in his veins, running over his skin and bone, like acid, and for a moment he wished Kagome had left him to stand in the midst of the plain.

They ran, hands clasped, Kagome's arm pulled awkwardly behind her back.

The roar of the enemy met their ears, and Sesshoumaru looked east, to see a line of grass part, a dark figure slinking through the green, picking up speed.

She was tall, thin, a wisp of flesh. Her eyes were pulled taut against skin, hair slick and thin against a gaunt skull. Her movements were rapid, quick, striking, and serpentine.

Black fury covered golden eyes.

Sesshoumaru dropped Kagome's hand and the girl looked over her shoulder, eyes widening as she saw the unnatural movement of the grass, the dark woman pursuing them.

Sesshoumaru reached and snagged the girl, and in one impressive movement, he hauled her up onto his back, his hands moving to grip her legs, to wrap them securely around his waist. By reflex, her arms threaded around his neck, nearly choking him with the sheath and sword in her hands.

"Is that what I think it is?" she yelled, burying her face in his shoulder, hiding her eyes from the scorching high plain wind.

"The extremely territorial guardian of the wind spirit? Yes, Miss Higurashi, it is." He darted sideways, keeping his grip on the girl, the air rushing past, a failed strike slamming into the dirt where they had just passed, running with the wind at their backs.

He felt Kagome turn and meet eyes with the enemy, the woman who, one moment, appeared to be entirely human, was a then slithering mass of pristine jaws, of sharpened fangs. A small cry left the girl's lips and she tightened her grip on the man.

"Hold on."

Kagome trembled. "You know you can't kill it right?!"

He maneuvered quickly, vaulting forward, his legs springing, jumping farther than any human ever could, his feet landing squarely, only to pick up their former movement, catapulting them out of the snapping jaws of the serpentine enemy behind them.

"Yes, I know. _I_ told _you_ that."

"Damn it I wish you could though." Her voice jostled strangely in his ear, and he tightened his grip on her, nearly ripping her clothes with the force of his nails, the sharp points that dug into the back of her thighs. Sesshoumaru vaulted again, the jaws too close for his liking. "Hurry!"

"If you would like to carry me and keep us out of the enemy's grasp, then and only then you may order me about!" He bent, hoisting the girl farther up his back, fighting the valley floor, the uneven ground, the obstacle of heavy grass.

He was loosely following their path, back to the village, but with the wide expanse all around them, he was not sure they would make it without a fight.

He did not know how far the demoness's domain reached, how powerful it really was. Absently, he called forth his magic, in case the worse should happen, in case he could not outrun the enemy.

"No, don't!" Kagome yelled in his ear, an abrasive command in her tone that he had never thought she would possess. "Taisho, don't! You can't hurt it! You'll injure the spirit! But, for god's sake, you will outrun it! Now go!"

Growling, angry, he channeled his strength, focusing on nothing but the speed at which they ran. He darted, weaving through the valley, slowly gaining ground over his enemy.

It was almost otherworldly, their position in the undulating plains, the valleys devoid of any life save theirs. The grass whispered around his legs as they fled, the sky above a haunting simple blue, almost too beautiful and serene for the scene they were in, the fear that coursed through the girl, the power that threaded the muscles of the man

It was not easy to run.

In fact, Sesshoumaru glowered, it was perhaps one of the most difficult things he had ever done.

Sesshoumaru Taisho did not cower, he did not turn from adversity, did not run. He never wavered from battle, from certain death. He was a warrior, a warlord, a master of the blade.

Only cowards ran, only the weak.

But then, he thought, as his eyes fell on the blade held against his chest by his passenger, it would be prudent to remain in control of the weapon. If he ignored the girl, took the blade and attempted to defeat the enemy, she might, once again, relinquish his rights to wield it. _And_, his mind interrupted, he did not wish to kill the wood spirit. Not really. It would be such a waste of magic and who knew how the world would suffer in the aftermath of her passing?

And, that, faced with the adversary behind them, would be a predicament, indeed.

"Miss Higurashi…"

He felt the grip of her free hand, bunching the shirt on his chest, her face once again buried in his neck. "I know! I know you don't want me to tell you what to do, but I also know that you aren't going to kill it. So, really, I'm not telling you what to do at all."

Her voice was suddenly strangled as they lurched, his footing unbalanced as he stretched his legs, nearly wrenching free from the girl clinging to his back. Sesshoumaru looked over his shoulder, hoping the beast did not take the opportunity to strike, to see it, the length of its constricting strength; halt, unblinking crystalline eyes fading into the green, as it began to slither back, unable, or unwilling to follow them further.

The mountains that they had passed between only hours earlier had closed in. They had traveled nearly half the distance in much less than half the time, fueled by the threat that disappeared into the waving grasses of the valley.

Sesshoumaru did not stop until they passed back through the spirit gate, and were in the village, now teeming with people, awake and alert after a day's hard work. The man halted, skidding in the dust, breathing steadily, though he rightly should have been heaving with the strain and effort. He felt the tiny drop of sweat roll down his temple to mingle with the white-silver hair flowing around his face.

He _was_ straining now, inside, the edges of his magic licking at their locks and gates, testing his iron-clad control.

Kagome slipped down from his back, her legs weak, but her attention was focused on him. "If you could do that why did I have to walk all that way to begin with?" He glared at her and she smiled nervously, her eyes darting over his face, "I was joking, Taisho. Are you alright?"

He nodded, his attention diverted to the eyes around them, the people who had stopped to stare at the strange scene, a man and a girl, swords in tow, disheveled, an air of urgency around them.

With the raking eyes of the people, Sesshoumaru tensed and reached for the blade, taking it from Kagome's trembling hands, flashing it before the farmers who had stopped their daily lives to stare, to leer. At the sight of the weapon, most of their captive audience turned and busied themselves, gathered their children and hurried down the streets, away from the threatening presence of the warrior.

Taisho reached for Kagome, and pulled her hand into his, tugging her down the streets toward a place where they could rest, where he could glean the information he hoped she possessed.

* * *

"Here."

Kagome, startled, pulled her absorption from the dirt at her feet to the small bottle that hovered in front of her face. Taisho pushed it closer, sloshing some of the water onto her. She smiled weakly and curled her fingers around the object, drinking deeply, wishing the water would wash away the words that were rolling in her mind.

"Thank you."

She gazed at him through heavy lashes, saw him incline that immaculate head of his, noticed again, the dark lines across his cheekbone, and found that the tips of her fingers wished to trace them, before they faded again. She gazed at that spot for a moment, ignoring the uncomfortable wooden splinters of the bench she perched on, the rubber muscles of her legs, and saw that the marks did not disappear into smooth skin. Not this time. No, they remained just under the surface, like the memories of the wood spirit, the fate she supposedly belonged to, faint, and if the light was right, almost invisible, but there, real, and true, just the same.

The man crouched down in front of her, his fingers slowly threading around hers, to pull the empty bottle from her hands and place it on the dirt. Above them, the sky was beginning to darken with evening. Hours had passed since they last set foot in the village, but to her, it seemed nothing but a blur. The only thing that truly existed in that moment was the man before her, who waited, a cold malice building behind stone.

"Tell me what happened."

She drew a deep breath, and knew, with little question or difficulty, that Taisho would not like what she had to say.

"She knew who I was, that I was the Protector. She didn't know my name, but she seemed to know _me_. She said that I had a hard path to walk but that she could not tell me anything of our journey because to do so would interfere with fate. But, it seemed as if she did know…" Kagome turned her troubles to her hands, scratched and bleeding, so much easier to speak to than the perfect man before her. "She said that to defeat the demon, I, or, I suppose she meant we, _we_ have to complete the whole. And she said," Kagome swallowed as she centered on his face again, the golden depths within, "She said that I would not rest in peace until we completed the whole. That was about all she said," she finished desperately, feeling the spike in the power of the man.

For the first time in days, weeks maybe, she wasn't sure, her awareness of time had all but left her, she felt the sword prodding her conscious mind. She felt his boiling rage, slowly building, a feeling of entitlement, a proud superiority, a refusal of the words, of the supposed destiny.

And Kagome, who had been so prone to her own moments of anger, reached out and laid a crimson stained hand on his shoulder, leaving dirt and blood in its wake.

"Taisho."

The eyes that might have been beautiful had they not belonged to a killer, an assassin, flickered, dimming to the dark depths of his worst and most secretive parts. The nameless sword vibrated against its sheath, spoke to her on the whispering breeze.

"_Taisho_."

He did not respond, and while his eyes still held hers, claws found their way to the hand on his shoulder, and with the utmost care he removed it, and positioned the appendage to the front of his face. His other hand moved to hers, held in front of his face, and she felt the feather light tracing of his finger, maneuvering across her pink palm, dirtied with grime. She felt the tingling warmth of his healing magic, a murmur of a characteristic, the power to heal, a trait that did not fit a killer.

A shiver flew across her skin, over the base of her spine, up to her hair, where it buried into her head, to create a thick fog and mist of uncertainty.

When he released her, the fury was gone, as was the blood in the creases of her hand.

And they were left to stare at one another, the future hanging in between.

* * *

He was not a tool.

He was not a meaningless vessel to be toyed with.

He was not to be bound by fate.

He would not allow it.

And while he contemplated his wrath, a different part of him echoed softly. Perhaps, it said, gently, as if calming a great, terrifying beast, perhaps it is too late to worry about fate. Perhaps, the voice whispered, perhaps he was already too immersed, already on the path of providence.

He closed aching eyes, and despite the frightening power that swam within him, that warned all to stay away, he felt the presence of the small woman, her hand on his shoulder, blood on her face.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her, rooted on the wooden perch, waiting for him to respond, to prove that he was fine, that he was the stoic Taisho she hardly knew. He studied her for a moment in time, almost irritated that she had the audacity to encroach on his space, to touch him and be near.

But, he would forgive her.

As he had before and as he was sure he would do again.

He blinked away the dangers within and took her hand into his, to study it. Fragile and human, flawed. She was so very flawed.

From her sarcasm to the anger that was buried deep within her, a product of her past, the loss of her family, of that he was sure. She did not know herself, this girl before him. Not yet. The definition of Kagome Higurashi could be was up in the air, was forming as they hung in the balance.

He released her hand and leaned forward to part her hair, healing the scrapes on her face and forehead.

"Miss Higurashi, how did you manage to injure yourself worse here, when you were not attacked, than when you blew up a cliff face, dealt with a wind spirit, and our worst enemy?"

She blinked, surprised, startled out of her examination of him. "I am…clumsy?"

"This was something I was already aware of."

An indignant snort was her reply.

He stood and looked away from the small, ramshackle house they were resting against. Sesshoumaru reached into her pack, now slung over his shoulder, and produced a bottle of water, and handed it down to the girl.

As she drank, he turned to face the temple, just across the road from where they sat, glittering in the twilight. Lanterns lit the humble path, shinning to the doorway, the building itself shrouded in shadow.

Sesshoumaru felt the need to pace then, to stalk, do anything that would break him out of a cycle he had no say in.

Damn it.

The Warlord of the Western lands answered to no one. He would not take the words of the wood spirit as those written in stone. She was wise, she was ancient, she was this and that.

But she was not omniscient.

_She could not be. _

"I am not a pawn." He spoke this to himself, quietly, without the intention of anyone ever hearing him.

* * *

Kagome watched the man's rigid back, hesitating, knowing her words had been unwelcome. The idea of Taisho, selected to walk a preordained path. That fate would have the presumption to tell the man what to do, to expect him to be a _pawn_.

She sighed, and ran her fingertips across the hand he had healed, feeling both desolate and perturbed.

Stupid man.

Who cared whether or not destiny guided them?

She stood and walked to his side, maintaining her distance.

"You're being selfish."

Taisho laughed harshly and she felt his unwavering gaze trailing over the side of her face.

"And how did the infinitely wise Kagome Higurashi come to this conclusion?"

She turned to face him then, placing her hands on her hips, surveying him with a disapproving air. "We're alive aren't we? By your skills and my I-don't-know-what? We're on this quest and there isn't much we can do about it. We made decisions and choices and now we're in it for the long run. I had my meltdown, I'll allow you yours. " She sighed deeply, "We could quit, but I think we both know we won't. I hope _I _won't."

His rumbling voice, like the breaking of a mountain face, slid through her mind, easing fears whether or not he meant to.

"You will not."

He brushed the hair away from his handsome face, regaining his composure, though, really, it had never fractured or broken. The air had simply grown still, cracked with the energy of his rage, now all but gone, as if the man had never experienced such emotions before.

"And you won't either. At least I have figured that much out about you, though," she exhaled wearily, "you are still a mystery to me."

"Good." Was the dry reply.

She allowed an exasperated sigh to escape her, giving him that satisfaction and knowledge that he could still irk her.

They looked toward the darkened temple, both feeling the rise of their hackles, the evil that rose from the dirt around the supposed holy place.

"It's not all so bad really," she murmured.

He continued to stare at the shadowy temple. "You do not think it insulting that we may be nothing more than mere pieces on a playing board? You, Miss Higurashi, who prides herself on her independence?"

She thought about this for a moment, and remembered the end of the road, where they were supposed to be heading, what they were supposed to accomplish. "It's not so bad. So long as we save the world from a baleful demon. Besides," she said airily, waving her hand nonchalantly, "I know where we need to go next."

Dark amusement surfaced on the face that turned toward her. "And where is that? Where is providence leading us?"

Kagome thought back to her vision, recalling the grey mountains under pristine snow. The curling trails, the white abyss of clouds, the nestled pillars and rooftops, hugged by an entire mountain range.

She was filled with excitement, anxiety, and as it seemed to be, since she had discovered the secrets of the world, fear.

"The Roof of the World," her voice was nothing, just a whisper, but the man next to her heard every syllable, every word, and could deem, as she was sure no other being quite could, the enormity of this next step in their journey.

"What did you see?"

Kagome puzzled. It would have been easy to describe had it been anything less than exquisitely magical. As it was, her mind could not seem to form the accurate words to paint the picture before him.

It was as if the place she had seen could not have existed in the real world, but only in a land of magic and waning sorcery, a land that most had forgotten, most would never see.

"Mountains. A man."

A shadow appeared over the face looming above her.

"Who was he?"

Kagome could not have told him where the words came from. She had not possessed them a moment before. It seemed then, at that moment, that she most certainly on a trail of destiny. If she had possessed the ability, maybe she would have seen ethereal fingers touching her shoulder, her temple, brushing across her lips, imparting words and knowledge that were not her own, that were sent from somewhere or someone who knew much more than she. But, standing in the midst of the empty dirt street, watching the suspicious, dark sanctuary, waiting for the appearance of yet another threat, Kagome knew she possessed no such prowess and that if it was fate that guided her hand, her feet, and her heart, that she might never know, might never be anything but what she was in that moment, a little girl playing fairytale.

"The Mage." She turned imperfect human eyes to a man who hid from the world, and felt the swaying of gravity, the pull of something more. "He is the Mage."

* * *

_There you go. Hope you liked it. Thanks for reading! _


	20. Falling

**Chapter 20**

Falling

_The Mage?_

The words propelled Sesshoumaru back in time, through hundreds of years, to the last time he had seen his companions together, the last time he had seen them at all. It had been so far lodged in memory that it took a moment to pry up the past.

Shuffling through the names, places, faces, magic, and history he had seen, he paused, remembering the twinkling of dark eyes, the chameleon of a man, hiding his power behind a pleasant face.

That was the man, the sorcerer, the magician of power.

Sesshoumaru remembered him clearly then, his hands, always busy with something, the glinting of his magical bands, the objects from which he stored and drew his power, jingling around his wrists and forearms.

He remembered the fall of three separate pairs of footsteps, trailing just behind him on an overgrown path. The slight catch of a once injured leg, the thump of a wooden staff, and the careful hop of a young shadow, feet that had seen but a few years. In that moment, he did remember them all, but his focus narrowed to a point, centered on the Mage.

He opened his mind's eye, and allowed the memories to submerge, though they hovered, just below the surface, should he need to pick them up and examine them again.

"The Mage?"

Next to him, calm and composed, her fear reigned in, her pain a thing of the past, Kagome nodded.

"The Mage."

He contemplated this revelation, turning it over in his mind. This, he supposed, meant the man was still alive. Not common for a human, but not impossible for a man infused with such sorcery.

He had lived.

Sesshoumaru felt the mingling of relief and anxiety, tumbling together to form a new emotion, one of trepidation, a bitter reminder of forgotten times.

The Mage _lived_.

So many years had passed between them, Sesshoumaru and his companions. Their history was, in some ways, nothing but a legend, far too fanciful to ever have been truth rooted in reality. But then he remembered the blood spilled, and the pain of loss, the lives that were taken along the bloody road to victory. It had not been a legend, but he preferred to weave it as one. He chose to remember it as something it was not, and retell that story as he saw fit.

But those times were far-gone, lost in the pace of the world, and in many ways, he was thankful for that. He did not need to worry that marauders would sweep past he and Kagome, he did not need to protect her from a war torn land. He did not need to pace outside her sleeping quarters to protect her from assassins, did not need to wait for the enemy forces to descend and claim his lands, his birthright.

That at least, was something of the past. Though, he conceded, there was no telling when it would occur again in the future. Maybe never, maybe in a month, a year, a decade. He did not know, and in not knowing, he was helpless.

Sesshoumaru felt weary then, as the past thrust itself upon him, breaking across him like waves on a shore. He much preferred the idea of drowning than facing the immediate future. But this was not something he would ever admit. It was not in his nature to concede fault or flaw and it was not what was expected of him. It was not what he expected of himself.

"Well, let us add the Mage to our list of things that must be taken care of."

Kagome craned her neck to look at him, puzzled. "Is there something else we have to do first?"

A brittle smile weaved its way onto his mouth. "Did you think we would just whirl away to him? It is not as simple as that. Do you even know where to find him?"

"The Roof of the world?" She asked, her voice lifting in awkward uncertainty. "I don't know. You always seem to have all the answers! Why shouldn't I assume you know this, too?"

He chuckled, deep and dark, amused even in the midst of his disturbance. "No, Miss Higurashi, my omniscience is not fully functioning on this occasion. Come, we have business with the priest of this temple."

"Wait! We-"she stumbled after him, trying to catch his attention. "Why do you need-" She tripped again, and gave up questioning him when he did not pause, ignored her entirely.

Stepping forward, he made his way over the stone steps leading to the inner sanctums of the temple, and Kagome hurried after him, her curiosity palpable, a scent, a taste on the air. He did not slow his pace until he met the flimsy wooden doors of the sanctuary. He thrust them open with force, startling the inhabitants inside, praying, meditating, and speaking quietly in corners.

"Where is the priest of this temple?" His voice echoed, deafening, startling the people with its volume. Peasant folk cowered in the shadows of his power, averting their eyes from the warrior. "_Where?_"

A woman, cowering on the dusty floor pointed to an open door near the back of the darkened room and Sesshoumaru swept past them, Kagome following behind, smiling apologetically in his wake.

Out the back of the temple and into a dead garden they traversed, Sesshoumaru opening and expanding his awareness, searching for the priest. A moment later, without the aide of his senses, he saw the man frozen in the elongated shadows, staring at the silver haired warrior.

When Sesshoumaru met the man's eyes, the priest fell to his knees, wringing his hands, pleading.

Good.

It pleased him to know that he still inspired fear.

Not that this ability was ever in question. A warlord simply liked to have such terror restated every now and again.

He made his way to the man, prone on the dry grass, to stop, the toes of his shoes just visible in the man's prostrate vantage point.

"Get up."

The man's shaking and sniveling ratcheted up a level, and Sesshoumaru thought he smelled the salt of tears. His lip curled and his hands reached out, snagging the humble robes, pulling the man to his feet. Behind him, Kagome let out a gasp, but made no move in his direction.

"Priest, so nice to make your acquaintance. Would I be right to assume that you serve the demoness, the serpent that hunts in the valleys surrounding your borders?" The middle-aged man, small and meek, merely nodded. "And, do these people of your village know that they are worshipping an abomination?" A trembling head shook, no. "I see. So, when your demoness came here, however many centuries ago, she trapped Kaede, the wood spirit, and overtook her temple, and the priests of this sanctuary took it upon themselves to pass this vital, truthful information down through the line of successor priests. Am I correct?"

"Y-yes… more or less."

Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed, and he yanked the priest closer, his grip on the front of the garments tightening, threatening to choke off the man's air.

"Tell me, now, before I lose my patience, how do I release the wood spirit from her confines?"

The man's sun spotted hand came up to clutch the front of his robes, trying to work himself free of Sesshoumaru's clasp. The warrior only proceeded to slowly, as if he were bored, raise one of his hands and flex his claws, shining in the half-light.

"You must kill the demoness!" The man yelled, his voice cracking as it rose.

"Incorrect, as that would also kill the wood spirit," Sesshoumaru snarled and his eyes sparked with dark malice.

He dropped the man and watched as the priest crumpled to the dirt, quivering from fear. He crouched and casually examined his hands, watching as the claws lengthened, the white light of his power surging over his fingertips.

The priest chanced a look up from behind his arms and released a frightened slur of incoherent words.

"I do not believe I heard you correctly, Priest."

The man burrowed his head back into the ground, his voice muffled as he spoke.

"You would need to break the sealing stones around the area to free the spirit from both her physical confinement as well as her spiritual ties to the demoness."

Sesshoumaru stood to his full height, shadowy around the edges, blending into the coming night.

"Do go on."

"The spells are powerful. I do not know how to break them. They are an ancient magic placed by a sorcerer, long before my time. I am but a humble man."

Sesshoumaru regarded the priest with disdain. "You are neither humble nor are you a man. You are nothing."

He felt Kagome tiptoe over to stand next at his side. Their eyes met and Sesshoumaru gave her the barest hint of a smile, and her face relaxed, the muscles in her shoulders uncoiling, her hands uncurling from their fists. A silent exchange passed between the man and girl, one of mutual understanding, a connection that was new, startling almost, and Sesshoumaru momentarily felt his concentration slip.

The priest took this as an opportunity to crawl away from the man towering above him. Sesshoumaru moved, bringing his foot down to land on the man's fingers. The priest cried out and wilted beneath the pain.

"I am not finished with you."

The man, blubbering for mercy, clutched at the dirty ends of Sesshoumaru's clothes. He ignored the grasping fingertips; unconcerned, tired of the time it was taking to receive the answers he craved.

"Stop sniveling. Tell me exactly how to disengage the stones. Do not feed me lies, do not leave out any piece of information that you think I might need. If I need to, I will crush your fingers… and that will be my starting point. Do you understand?" Sobs echoed up from the dirt and a watery understanding trembled from whimpering lips. "Good. Speak. _Now_. Before I lose any more of my patience."

The Priest raised his head; face caked with dirt and tears. "To break the stones you would need to know how to reverse the binding spell. It is intricate magic, powerful magic. The spells were placed by a dark sorcerer, I assume you would need to understand sorcery and magic of that magnitude."

"In other words, I need a sorcerer, a mage."

The man nodded, avoiding Sesshoumaru's piercing gaze.

Inside, the warlord was rolling in his eyes.

Fantastic.

_Fate_.

Sesshoumaru took his foot off the man's hand and stepped back, watching as the priest sank back into the dirt, relief manifesting in his relieved tears. Kagome, suddenly at his side, gently tugged on his shirtsleeve, commanding his attention.

"What happened? What did he say?"

Sesshoumaru kept the priest in the corner of his eye and he turned toward the girl, obscured in the darkened garden. For a moment, she seemed to hang suspended in time, caught between his past and his future, a strange winding sensation worming its way through his body, a cold wash of uncertainty turning his limbs to ice, emotions he was, even after all his years wandering the earth, unable to become accustomed to.

Though they found clues, though they meandered a way through their tumultuous relationship, Sesshoumaru felt, in that single second of time, that he would never be adequately prepared to protect the girl before him, and the idea of repeating past mistakes sent him reeling. It would be so much easier to order her about, to tell her what to do and when to do it. To demand nothing but obedience.

It would be so easy not to _try_. So much easier if he could just _be_. Be without compassion, be without understanding, be the ruthless warlord.

But then, what was the point of living for centuries, for making a promise to a dying soul?

These thoughts, dancing a tantalizing step around his reserve, were a deep abyss he did not wish to broach, thoughts he could not contemplate in a single moment's span. He did not like the idea of revisiting them later, but he also knew that it would be impossible to avoid. He had lost his ability to brush off sentiment and remain immune. After all, he admitted to the quiet of his soul, those deep memories had resurfaced everyday for half a millennia. Why would they stop now?

"I desire to know how to break the barrier surrounding the wood spirit."

Kagome's face broke open, surprise and confusion leaking out, her exclamation jubilant in the night air, "You're going to help her!"

He looked away, gazing at the setting sun, a purple and orange haze through the reaching arms of trees. "I deem it necessary to break the spells holding her because I wish to know why we are bound by fate. Why _she_ believes we are bound by fate. My reasons for doing this are my own. I am not a man driven by empathy."

Kagome raised a disbelieving eyebrow. "Taisho, you are on a mission to save the world. How can you not be driven by empathy?"

"Do you wish to argue about my motives or do you want to know what I have learned?"

Eyeing the sprawled figure of the priest, she edged closer to Sesshoumaru. "We can argue about semantics later. What did you learn?"

He exhaled, blowing silver wisps of hair off his cheekbone. "We need the mage."

There was a silence, stretched thin in the evening hours.

"So…"

He glanced back at the priest, who, in the intervening time, had collected his tears to a more controlled burst of sobs.

"So," she started again, shifting, placing herself in his line of sight, "so, you were angry about this supposed fate, my visions, etcetera, and when said visions point to the mage, you decide that, because we are probably, maybe, guided by destiny, you need to discover a way to question the spirit that told me about this fate, which come to find out, means you need to find the mage?" He nodded and she gaped at him. "Which means, really, you have just proven this is probably exactly what the wood spirit meant when she spoke of fate?" Sesshoumaru frowned. He was already well aware of the implication of the priest's words. "Never mind. Don't answer that. It doesn't matter. We need to find the Mage to save the wood spirit to answer your questions. Fate or no."

That was certainly true.

He bent at the waist, eyeing the priest with dislike. Sensing the power above him, the priest let out a moan of fear.

"You may warn the demoness that I spoke to you, but it would not be in the best interest of your life span. Be assured that we will return, that the days of your mistress are numbered. Do you understand, priest?"

"Y-yes! Please, please, spare me."

Sesshoumaru growled in contempt. "I spare you because you answered my questions. I am not a compassionate man. Remember this and you will live."

He straightened, staring down at the weakness at his feet, disgusted, taking a single moment to fold the moment in his mind, a reminder why he fought his battles, to rid the world of such evil, of such underhanded ways, to save the ones who were good and pure. He turned, his eyes landing on the girl, jagged, a mixture of innocence and worldly knowledge, of strength and flaw, and he stepped forward, collected Kagome and whisked her off through the temple, through the town, and back to his mansion, to plot, to plan, to find a way to avoid fate, to defeat the demon without the aide of the unknown.

* * *

Inuyasha did not need anyone to tell him when his brother entered the vicinity. The air around him was enough of an indicator. If he were within a hundred miles of his brother, he was relatively certain the world would tremble, would utter a warning to humanity, beast, demon, and spirit alike. His presence was hovering, so overbearing that it had woken him from a deep sleep, prodding him into wakefulness.

He found the man in the enormous library, nestled between the towering bookcases. Sesshoumaru stood in the shadows, bent over a sizable oak table, a creased map spread flat along the surface. The lights were dim, and the sun had yet to stretch across the western lands, a dull blue haze of midnight faded into morning clutching the corners of the room, shrouding it in dusty shades.

"State your reason for disturbing me or leave."

His steps were halted by the deep voice, though Sesshoumaru did not bother to raise his eyes, or shift his attention from the map he was studying.

"How did the trip go?"

His brother leaned closer to the ancient paper, his long, clawed finger tracing an invisible line across a one-dimensional countryside.

"As it was not a trip, not a getaway, not a weekend in the countryside, I should _not_ need to inform you as to how my quest occurred."

Inuyasha sidled up to the table, dark amusement glittering in his eyes. " It went that well?"

Sesshoumaru made and indistinct noise in his throat, a harsh laugh struggling to escape from his chest. Well versed in his brother's line of humor, Inuyasha couldn't help but derive amusement from Sesshoumaru's infinite morbid personality, his harsh, caustic words.

Although they often, mostly… almost always… seemed to find ways to disagree, Inuyasha, in the deepest parts of his unselfish mind, admired his brother. It would be a cold day in hell when he admitted it, but it was true.

He studied his brethren for a moment, the savior of mankind and man's unknown counterpart, the magical and the fantastic, the spiritual and the otherworldly.

It was funny to him that they were always able to pick up where they left off, without cataloguing the days, months, or years since they had last interacted. In many ways, everything changed, but in a few timeless instances, not much did. And it seemed to Inuyasha that his relationship with his brother was one of those things that _could__not_ change. Not much anyway.

Past all their differences they were family and allies, and their goals were very nearly the same.

That was how it had always worked and how it always would.

"So, where are you are now?"

Sesshoumaru finally managed to spare his younger brother an antagonizing look, his fingers hovering above an unknown destination on the map.

"I am in my library."

Inuyasha sighed. The quest, given the mood of its handler, must not have been going well at all.

"I can see that, Shou. What I meant was what's your next step?"

"Why did you not simply ask that?"

Inuyasha gritted his teeth and his arms rose unconsciously to cross over his chest, as if to restrain himself from vaulting across the table and engaging the other man in an unproductive but, he was sure, completely satisfactory fight.

He would have loved to cross swords with his sibling. He longed to both test and prove his skills, but he knew it would accomplish little, if nothing. Perhaps, he thought, as he peered at the map on the table, there would be a time in training, before they met with the demon, that he would have a decent practice round with the man who had trained him as a boy.

"I don't know. Where are you in your quest?" he asked shortly, voice tight with an age old temper.

Sesshoumaru tapped the aged paper with an impatient finger, his brow furrowing in thought.

"Apparently our path is guided by _fate_. And _fate_ is leading us to the mage. And that is our next step."

Inuyasha's mouth fell open.

Of all the things he had expected to hear, these were the two farthest down on his list.

Sesshoumaru Taisho guided by fate?

Even Inuyasha, who lived to see the rare moments when the capable warlord was thrown askew, thought this was simply ridiculous.

"Right. Fate. I'll buy that when you let me use that sword of yours." Golden eyes narrowed in warning, a sure sign he had stepped over the carefully preserved boundary between the two brothers. Inuyasha suddenly found it in his best interest to occupy himself with the map and he leaned down over the table to examine it.

"The Tibetan Plateau? The Mage is in the mountains?"

Before his brother could speak, Inuyasha heard the echo of paws on hardwood, and a feeling of horror overwhelmed his curiosity, drowning it out with desperation.

Desperately, he looked around for an exit, a way to conceal himself.

There was nowhere to hide.

Whirling around, he saw the beast, the creature that had plagued his days and then entered into his dreams, turning them into short-legged nightmares. The furry horror ran right up to him and sat on his feet, and it took all of his training and reservation to keep the shudder from engulfing his body.

He hated that damned dog.

Kagome appeared a moment later, still dressed from her journey, dirt and grass littering her pant legs, the smell of blood wafting from her hands. A small knowing smile touched her lips as she met Inuyasha's eyes. At this tiny gesture of peace, he felt an uncomfortable need to avert his gaze.

She, however, walked right up to him and waited for him to acknowledge her. Slightly taken aback, he shifted, trying to place some distance between them, but his actions were severely hampered by the brick of fur on his feet. Vaguely, through all the other annoying stimuli around him, he felt piercing, golden eyes warning him to watch his actions.

"You took care of Ajax while we were gone?"

Inuyasha drew himself upright, gazing down his nose to meet her eyes. He nodded stiffly; a curt thrust of his chin, only once, enough to convey his point without making supreme effort. Her smile widened. Inside, he felt an inner tug, a fracture creasing its way down the wall he built around his thought and words, the need to hide, the reason to be kept apart.

He didn't like the feelings crawling around inside.

They were such ancient emotions that they felt new to him, original and unused, fresh and breakable. His discomfort grew when she remained in front of him, staring at him in earnest gratitude. His eyes shifted away again, focusing on the tops of the bookshelves, rather than on the bright appreciation before him.

"Thank you," she intoned gently, before slipping around the side of the table to stand by Sesshoumaru, leaving the younger brother his space. "The Tibetan Plateau," she murmured, leaning down over the map, her eyes reflecting the delineated lines of rivers and mountains. "Is this where you think we need to go?"

Inuyasha, frozen in his spot across the table, could do nothing but stare at her bowed head, her fingers tracing the lines Sesshoumaru had. His older brother was bent, long arm extended over Kagome's shoulder, pointing out landmarks and province lines, disputed territories, villages, towns, life laid out on a simple scroll of paper. She was nodding absently, elbows and forearms on the surface top, dark hair falling onto the wrinkles of the page.

"This map is old, but it may still serve our purpose. It catalogues many Buddhist monasteries in Tibet and China and those," his claw circled around the small symbols on the map, "are the documented ones. There are some hidden from the world. These," he pointed to smaller, darker spots on the map, fewer and farther in between than any other mark on the map. "They serve a different purpose than the traditional sanctuary. I believe the Mage, given your description of the structure you saw him in, is in one such monastery. Although, this would be ironic and not at all what I would have expected of the man I once knew."

Kagome continued to run her fingers over the chart, puzzling to herself. Her voice was soft and vacant as she asked, "Why is that?"

Sesshoumaru laughed contemptuously. "He enjoyed his drink, his blaspheming, and his women, far too much to ever be considered a holy man… to ever _consider_ a life as a holy man." A fanged tooth glimmered as his mouth pulled upwards, a leering half smile. "He was powerful, the Mage. One of the most powerful men I had ever met. He was also a warrior. He killed, spilled as much blood as any soldier or warlord."

The anchor on Inuyasha's feet was lifted, the waddling mass moving off to wreck havoc on some other unfortunate soul. Enthralled by the dark sardonic humor resonating from his brother, he moved to lean against the smooth wood of the bookcases, watching the invisible memories flow from the Sesshoumaru's mouth to paint themselves on the air, in their eyes, and in their heads.

Kagome leaned against the table, distant, on some other plane, absently toying with the ends of her hair, her head to one side, listening with rapt attention, her aura moving in time with Sesshoumaru's spoken word.

Inuyasha's dark eyes narrowed as his attention flew to the girl, a strange echo reverberating off of her body, gently stirring the air of the room. It was a tranquil feeling, like fingers trailing through his hair, the caress of the wind. Sesshoumaru's voice broke his concentration and his eyes flew back to his older brother.

"He lived for no one but himself. I would not say he was selfish, merely a man with no ties, and a penchant for the pleasures of the world. His façade fooled many, his enemies the most. They believed he was not to be taken seriously, the whimsical man of supposed magical prowess. He was…" He trailed off and pulled his thoughts from the past back into the present, where the immediacy of life was concerned, where a brother and a young woman waited for the future, for the man to deliver it to them. "He was impressive."

Inuyasha grinned then, knowing what it would take for Sesshoumaru Taisho to admit the power of another. Indeed, _impressive_ was a word that, for any other man, would have been replaced with phenomenal, astronomic, or tremendous. As it was, he had only ever received praise that fell into the category of indistinct grunts of recognition.

The smile on Inuyasha's face was lost a moment later when Kagome uttered a faint cry before pushing back from the table, pale and trembling. Sesshoumaru grasped her arm, careful of his claws, keeping her upright. Inuyasha had taken a steps forward, was reaching for a sword that was not at his side, ready to defend against an enemy that did not exist.

He felt the flow of blood to dormant extensions, fingers, toes, legs, arms, soul.

He was more than ready for this journey. He was waiting on the edge of the world, watching from the distance, lost in a haze of separatism. He was not yet accustomed to life with a few choice individuals, he was still lost in the past, missing inside. But he was ready for the fight to ensue; he had waited nearly his entire life to move, to stop running, to finish it once and for all.

He wanted there to be a threat. He wanted Kagome to have sensed the demon, just outside the mansion. He wanted this and he wanted that and in wanting each of these things he discovered he was afraid. He was fearful that he would be a part of fate and destiny and talk of what should be. He wanted the fight, the victory. He did not want to worry about the role he was to play.

He was not insulted by the idea of destiny. Not like his brother. His aversion was not because he didn't believe, or didn't trust in the potential of something other. Though he hoped it was not so, he could accept fate if he had to. It was that, if fate had pre-ordained him, if he had been _chosen_, it could mean a sacrifice of what he wanted most.

And it was a simple want. So very simple. Tragically so. He wanted an end. And then he would fade happily into oblivion.

But if… _if_… he wasn't to reach this end, if it was written in fate that he should die, fail before… he had nothing.

He was dark inside and he knew it well. He had lost the one thing that truly mattered. And no sword, no steel, no vengeance would ever bring it back. Without his hunt, without the one desire to go onward, he was nothing. Dark and empty.

As he watched Sesshoumaru hold Kagome upright, he felt himself hope, desperately, that this would be their end, in that very moment. That he would see the end, and would end in peace.

In a moment's breath, though, this wild hope, all of his darkest fears and most perilous hopes were dashed as Kagome pushed away anxious hands and pointed to a spot on the map, her finger trembling with excited certainty.

Her words erased all former thoughts of ending, of finishing, of blighting.

"He's here. The Mage. Right here."

And Inuyasha was back from the murky depths of his soul.

Dismayed with his instantaneous reactions, his anger burned to the surface. He was furious with the world, vexed with whatever force kept him from his desire, and wrongly, though in that moment far too incised to know it, enraged with the girl.

Inuyasha took two strides and was at the table, examining the location with narrowed eyes and mounting incredulity.

"What? You can suddenly read a map?"

He was met with a scorching emerald gaze. "I am an educated person, Ash. I have a bachelor's degree in Anthropology. Part of Anthropology is Archaeology. Part of Archaeology is the ability to understand the lay of the land and read that information when it is laid out in linear fashion. To read the topography of a map isn't a difficult thing to master.

You may not like me, but don't assume your distaste and distrust of my person means that I am ignorant. That is a ridiculous assumption, one that leads you to underestimate me, which in turn, leads us to situations like this. Now, if I have defended my intelligence well enough, I hope you will, if you don't mind very much, remove your ego to a less offensive distance. It's interfering with my concentration, demanding that I put it in its place."

She released a short, angry breath of air before adding, "And I didn't just miraculously remember how to read a map. I had a flash of a vision. It showed me where the Mage was in relation to this map."

Inuyasha glanced up at his brother. Sesshoumaru, hovering just behind the girl, wore a hidden smirk, smug in Inuyasha's sharp reprimand.

The three individuals were quiet for several moments, waiting for the immediate threat of tempers to cool and stagnate, return to a normalcy. Inuyasha felt traitorous feelings well again, just as they had the night he had first introduced himself to her.

"I-" He gulped down his ego, found it was most difficult to swallow, and rushed onward to end the embarrassing pain before it was dragged on any longer. "I apologize," he finally managed to say, gruff, resentful.

"It's fine. I spout off all the time. Ask your brother. He'll tell you."

He felt a smile pull the corners of his mouth, and he allowed himself that simple softening, that small gesture of trust.

Sesshoumaru, after staring at Inuyasha for a good half minute, reached and pulled Kagome's hand off of the map and gazed at the spot her fingernail had trailed.

The wielder of the nameless blade smiled and looked up, meeting the curious, anxious, ever bright gazes of a girl and a boy, caught up in the impossible.

"We will go to the Mage."

* * *

It was late afternoon when he had finished preparing for their next journey.

As he walked the long halls of his mansion, he felt the smallest sense of relief and amazement at the human world. When he had first undertaken the journey of the blade and jewel, there had not been jets and billionaires, ways to flay halfway across the world in a single day. While he did his best to avoid the plague he considered mankind, he had to admit, that sometimes, when time was short, modern times were very, very advantageous.

His thoughts turned, as with most occasions, to the Kagome. Modern in every way, wrapped within ancient task. It seemed that she was not only a paradox, by her thoughts and emotions and traits, but the world revolving around her as well.

Sesshoumaru would have wondered where the Protector of his sword was, had he not known, almost innately, without question, that she would be in the garden, sitting by the shallow pond. He altered his course, seeking out her favorite spot.

She was nestled between nature and hell, the elaborate plantings cascading around her, the beast of a dog leaning into her folded legs. Her hand was absently threading its way through its coarse, tan fur, her face drawn into serious contemplation. A subtle hesitation nearly slowed his approach. Her weary distraction was troubling, and he decided, warily, that he needed to find the root cause of the emotions around her.

She looked up slowly, climbing out of the deep thoughts engulfing her.

In a move that was far removed from his character, Sesshoumaru lowered himself, physically and metaphorically, to worm through the messy human emotions, to sit with her. If she was surprised by his apparent desire for her company, or rather, if she was surprised by his innate understanding of _her_ need for company, she did not show it. She only gazed at his profile, melancholy.

He leaned backward, meeting the rise of a strategically placed slab of rock, allowing the minutes to stretch and the silence to lull, peacefully, until the quiet was comfortable.

"We'll be gone for awhile?" When she spoke, her words were measured, carefully chosen, weighty.

She was hiding again. Hiding something from him.

"Yes."

He allowed himself the small sneaking glance out the corner of his eye, a small window to her face. She appeared resigned, though not dejected or upset.

"I'm glad the meditation is paying off."

Yes, so was he.

That she had found the position of the Mage had substantially shortened the potentially lengthy search he had been preparing for.

Ajax moved to sit between them, whether for safety or for territory, Sesshoumaru was sure he did not know. The animal's move made him stiffen and he with drew his hands away from the vicinity of the creature, lest the wet snout prod him for attention.

"Remember when you said the story has no end?" He nodded. "What happens when we… when the demon… what happens when it does end?"

He allowed himself to turn, to gaze at her with uncomplaining honesty. "Then it ends."

She laughed and lost all of the worry that had threatened to overtake her. "Well, that's certainly true. I'm glad you aren't taken in by the horribly tragic nature of this life we live. I guess I'm far too whimsical to remain level headed about it." She giggled to herself for a moment. "I don't remember life before this adventure."

He snorted, wry, "I seem to recall you did not much like it. You were underpaid."

"_Thank you_. I thought so, too."

They fell into silence, watching the light on the pond, the graceful maneuvers of the fish, oblivious to the world outside their water.

He heard her breathe in, long and low, as if she were about to shoulder a difficult task.

"You'll make sure someone takes care of Ajax?" There wa a soft pleading note in her words, reaching across the distance between them to settle in his head, urgent and vital.

Family.

An irresponsible brother. A pesky corgi.

"Yes."

She leaned back against the stone surface staring at the scruffy head that laid itself down on her knee.

"Well then, onward with the adventures."

Their eyes met.

She was resolute, set in determination.

They turned toward the future, either the chosen or the forced destiny, and readied themselves for the impossible.

Because, at the end of the day, it was an impossible task.

Who could save the world by himself?

A knowing smile of shadows and secrets curved, and he thought, he could.

He could save the world.

And he would.

* * *

Sesshoumaru stood before the waiting vehicle, staring off into the distance, eyes centered on the mountains, snow capped and magnificent, hiding ancient secrets.

As they drove the dusty roads, higher and higher in altitude, the air thinned, the clouds lowered, the peaks neared. Now, standing on the side of the primitive route, gazing at the high plains, he could feel the draw of the land, of the magic, of all mysteries ever told and ever forgotten, collecting in the jutting of the earth, the infinite cracks and crevices, inroads and glaciers.

Their guide had deemed the spot an acceptable place to stop and stretch, which, Sesshoumaru found mildly amusing as he did not need rest, nor did he deem stretching a reason to halt their progress. One could accomplish both tasks in the vehicle. But apparently, the man driving them up the high plateau was not a man who long enjoyed sitting.

For the first few hours of their drive, the guide had been under the mistaken presumption that they were simply tourists, and he had spent every breath filling them in on the history, the scenery, and details about the land that Sesshoumaru did not care about. It was not until Inuyasha had 'accidentally' flashed his scabbard and sword that the man halted his torrential outpouring of words, and had, at that moment, turned a deathly shade of grey, slid his eyes to the road, gripped the steering wheel, and had not made a single comment until he pulled the all-terrain vehicle over for a rest.

Which was a good thing. Sesshoumaru did not want Inuyasha to spill vast amounts of blood in the tiny space within the car and he did not really want to drive up the dusty, unfamiliar roads. It would have made for a most uncomfortable rest of trip had his younger brother given in to his urge to decapitate the driver.

Sesshoumaru's attention was drawn down past the edge of the road, where Kagome stood, shielding her eyes against the sun, gazing at the distant mountains.

He was concerned with their inevitable assent of the mountain passes. Soon, they would reach the village that would, he hoped, be the opening pass to the hidden monastery. There, they would have to continue on foot, through the snow-covered pathways and steep inclines. They could not move at a leisurely pace. They did not have time.

He sighed and resigned himself to carrying her. It would not be safer but it would be faster. However, with Inuyasha present he felt the tiniest amount of relief. Although his brother was a nuisance and a hindrance in his own right, it would be better, in a dangerous place such as this, to have another watch his back. Especially if Kagome was on it.

Inuyasha appeared next to him, arms crossed over his chest, brows drawn in severe thought.

"Think we're being followed?"

Sesshoumaru listened to the world, felt it over, turned it around in his hands before responding. "Not yet." He looked skyward, waiting for a patch of dark spies to descend, to alert him to the presence of his enemies. There was no threat there, but it was always close, would always be just outside his range. "Be assured we will meet enemies in the mountains. It is unavoidable."

Inuyasha nodded his understanding and turned back to the vehicle, ready to continue on.

Sesshoumaru stood for a moment more, enjoying the calm before the storm, watching the small figure backlit against the world. And then, when they could wait no longer, he called out.

"Miss Higuarshi."

She turned and came to him as she always did, with reluctance, with trust, with whatever else was inside of her, all of the things he had yet to discover, all the emotion and thought that made Kagome herself. Up the rise she came, absently reaching for his hand to help her through the last step. A tiny, distracted gesture, but one he remembered, and mulled over in the quiet hours before they came upon their destination.

Sliding into the vehicle they continued onward and upward, to the very top of the earth, to the edge of the earth and beyond.

* * *

The village was awkwardly erected, a lopsided convocation of humble buildings and huts and tents, built into the steady climb of the mountains. Dotting the outskirts of the habitation, vibrant prayer flags whipped and snapped in mountain wind, littered as far as the eye could see, up and down the broken landscape.

Snow crept down to this area, hiding in long blue shadows, against the far sides of huts, melting where the golden bath of sunshine reached. Ahead, up the narrow trails the trees and low lush vegetation thinned, melding into ice and snow pack. The old worn paths were hardly visible, but to a veteran of the village they would have been easy to spot, the worrying away of grass and rock, the unnatural level of earth as it trailed helplessly upward to wind into the abyss of snow and cloud.

Kagome huddled near Taisho, already freezing from the high mountain wind and air. She was also, to her despair, experiencing a lack of oxygen. The altitude had succeeded in not only pressuring her ears into the most painful and successful popping of her entire life, but the thinning air was also working wonders on highly unacclimated lungs. She was used to the city. Not mountains. Not trekking _up_ mountains. Not trekking up mountains whilst expecting an attack from an unknown enemy.

She felt her knees go weak at the thought of running through heavy snow, an enemy at her back, all the while her lungs refusing to draw in precious oxygen.

Oh, damn it! How _did_ she get herself into such situations?

A hand found its way to her arm, pulling her out of thought, refusing to let her worry unnecessarily.

She met Taisho's brilliant eyes and gave him, she hoped, a grateful smile. Though, given her trepidation, it was probably more along the lines of a simple baring of teeth. The amused quirk of his eyebrow told her as much.

"You cannot handle the pass."

Did he think she didn't know that?

"I left my mountain climbing gear at home," she muttered, staring up past the tops of the village houses to where the mountains disappeared into the clouds of heaven.

"You need not worry. You are in capable hands."

She felt his words sliding over her skin, sending a shiver down her spine.

"Not, yet, I'm not," she responded, "I am currently trussed, strapped into a giant parka, and I am wading through my thermal layers."

"All in due time, then." Taisho removed his hand from her arm and began to pick his way up through the muddy roadway.

Behind them, Ash finished paying the driver and hurried past Kagome, brushing her shoulder as he passed.

"Are you going to stay there?"

Hearing the dry knot of sarcasm in his voice she shrugged at trudged after him. "If it suits me."

"I don't think it would. We're the ones with the swords." He patted the hilt of his weapon, strapped to his jacketed back.

"And that's why it doesn't suit me to stand here." She threw him a haughty look and walked…waded… up to Taisho, who had been, quite obviously, by the smirk on his face, listening to their conversation. He slanted a veiled look at her and she felt embarrassment kindle on her cheeks, burning dimly. "What?" He nodded his head back at his dark, unruly brother and Kagome bit her lip to keep from smiling. "If you can tease me why can't I do such a thing to someone else?"

Taisho said nothing, merely slid his eyes away and pushed back his amusement. She watched, fascinated as the light in his eyes sparkled and died, the slight upward movements of his lips disappear into nothing but cold, handsome features. She was about to wonder at the transformation when she felt the presence of people all around her, peering out from the houses, standing in the muddy trails, working just inside their fenced houses.

Kagome studied the humble people watching them. Faintly, she wondered what exactly it was that made the people stare so. If it was the swords the men carried, the presence of Taisho, overarching and powerful, or, she wondered quietly, was it her own designation as the Protector of the sword?

She felt Taisho come to a graceful halt while she stumbled in the muddy road, nearly toppling in her effort to stall her own steps. Standing in the road ahead of them was a man dressed in brilliant vermillion garments looped loosely over his body to fall at his feet, just above the dirt of the ground. His face was aged with lines, but there was calm in his eyes, wisdom, and knowledge. Around his wrists were heavy wooden beads, bracelets for prayers, disappearing up into the heavy folds of his clothing.

He bowed to them and Kagome looked to Taisho for his reaction. The man inclined his head, more so than she had seen him do for any other person. Apparently, the great warlord deemed even the most humble of men worthy of his respect.

She felt a presence at her back as Ash moved to stand by them, a nervous energy pervading the space in which he stood. This had a heady effect on Kagome, and she felt all other things fade away from the man before her, benign and peaceful. He was, for lack of better words, something other. She could not say with certainty and conviction, that she had felt a presence like his before, nor could she rule out that she hadn't in fact, sometime in her life, experienced such odd power. There was a familiarity to him, to the place from her vision that thoroughly confused her, as she knew she had never once set foot in Tibet and had only recently become aware of all things magical.

The man turned to her when Taisho failed to either decapitate him or make gestures of good faith.

He smiled and she drew back in hesitation. It was not that she was afraid of him. He seemed very kind indeed, and she was not normally keen on judging a person simply by their disposition or by their first introduction, but she felt an innate goodness resonating from the man. Like the tree, like the sword. It was unsettling, but past all her anxiety and inability to truly comprehend the complexities of Taisho's world, she did know how evil and good felt, and knew the difference between. And there was a very wide gap between the two.

The man spoke and she found herself wishing for either a personal translator or a brain large enough to encompass all dialects of the world. And while she could have neither of these, she had Taisho, who, without removing his eyes from the man, spoke quietly to her.

"He welcomes the Protector and blesses her with good fortune."

Kagome, in a moment where her brain shut off and her instincts took over, found herself bowing in return, humbling herself before the man, thanking him for his respect.

When she stood, she found Taisho staring down at her with dispassionate features. He seemed to be dissecting her from the outside in, attempting to figure out her edges and her nuances, as if he could in that split second before she spoke.

"They knew we were coming?"

Taisho and the man exchanged words and Ash moved to stand next her, his eyes trained on the people around them.

"I can't understand them either."

And that was a most unexpected olive branch.

Kagome favored him with sharp eyes, examining the thunderclouds on his face, and she found that she liked him, despite their less than cordial interactions. He reminded her of… well, he reminded Kagome of herself, and she couldn't begrudge him much for the similarity.

They were both a bit too spirited and they both carried deep shadows of pain.

She knew this without asking.

She knew because she shouldered it, too, and she felt, everyday, the desolation in his eyes. And, she thought with a hollow, empty chest, her heart stopping cold, they were not the only two who knew hurt and suffering. Her eyes trailed back over to Taisho, speaking slowly and carefully. He was stone and rock and he would not break. He had cracked before, he had been weathered and beaten, but he was there, standing next to them, and she understood, perhaps better than the two brothers, the need to hide behind a sword, to hide behind power and strength.

Her strength was not physical. It could not cut and kill.

But it didn't much matter as they all carried pain in a different way.

Taisho turned to them and they waited for his words with bated breath.

"They knew we were coming and they are waiting for us. He will lead us through the pass."

Kagome turned her eyes back to the monk, as she guessed he was, and allowed a small smile to form on her lips. The man returned the gesture and then meandered up the path. Taisho followed him closely, one hand on the hilt of his father's sword, the other hanging by his side, claws gleaming in the sunlight. Kagome fell in line behind him, numb fingers moving to the overlarge jacket she wore, buttoning it closer to her wind burned face before stuffing her fingers in her gloves. And then at her back, Ash brought up the rear of their small train, glaring over his shoulder at the village folk.

They trekked, or in Kagome's case, waddled, waddled ineffectively. It was not long before Taisho halted and she ran into him.

"Miss Higurashi, we really must cure you of your affection for physical bombardment."

Kagome, who resembled something of a giant down stuffed puffball, merely glared at him from the depth of the hood framing her face. He shook his head at her and hauled her up onto his back. For a moment they were a tangle of awkward limbs and bitter curses.

She was not happy at being handled so, but she could not really protest because she did not really want to waddle the entire way up the mountain. Actually, she thought, as the man hoisted her farther up his back and her protective hood fell back off her eyes and she was afforded a clear view of their path, a winding twisted trail, wrought with thousands of places a clumsy girl could slip and fall, it was a very good thing he had decided to manhandle her.

Kagome gasped as she studied the path. It seemed to be a straight ascent into the clouds. As the village faded behind them, disappearing as they curved around the trail, she felt the mountains close in until they were sandwiched on both sides. The snow grew in depth with each step the man took, but it did little to slow his set pace.

The monk they followed seemed to have sprung to life in the thin air, his steps were light and quick, and she felt that he had traveled this pass many times, for it seemed he knew exactly where to place his feet. Taisho was but a step behind the man, silent as always, gripping Kagome with firm hands, as if he thought she might find away to disengage herself and tumble back down the path. But, she had no intention of doing so; they had already traversed the trail faster than she thought imaginable and she did not like the idea of rolling end over end, all the way back to the bottom. She would break her neck for sure.

Ash's voice startled away thoughts of her body, lying in a decidedly mangled position at the base of the trail.

"Where exactly are we going?"

Taisho glanced over his shoulder and into Kagome's face, a frown creasing his countenance. He seemed to have forgotten he had a museum assistant clinging to his back. She did not quite understand how he could have failed to notice she was still wrapped around him, _she_ was acutely aware of the hands gripping her legs. He turned his head to the other side, eyes meeting with his younger brother's.

"He will lead us to the monastery. It is as I thought. The sanctuary functions as a seclusion for men who possess powers but wish to channel them in peaceful ways. Many of the inhabitants are like the Mage, their former lives were bloody, ruthless, and now, as a result, the individuals seek solace. He is leading us to that place, a tiered monastery, cloistered in the mountains. It is protected by many spells and is not easy to find nor is it easy to breech. We, I assume, given his short description of the place, would have had a difficult time locating it without our guide's help."

Kagome watched the vibrant red of the monk's back, bobbing up and down in front of her, hoping his pace would not slow. Her fingers, which she had shoved into impossibly bulky gloves, were continuing their downward spiral into numbness.

"Will it take long to get there?"

Taisho shook his head. "Not if we pick up our pace or run into any obstacles."

Kagome did not like the sound of that. "Obstacles?"

Behind her, she heard Ash snort. "Obstacles. Blockage of our path. Obstacles usually mean we'll run into enemies."

Kagome's arms tightened around Taisho as she imagined demonic bombardment colliding with their small group, lodged in the tight passageway, the thoughts sending a different sort of shiver down her spine. "Well, pick up the pace!"

"Now that we have your permission I am sure that we will continue on in due haste," Taisho muttered.

If she had not strapped her fingers into their gloves and if she did not think it a completely juvenile thing to do, Kagome would have pinched him. This, though, probably would not have been the best of ideas, as he had the upper hand and could, at any moment, dump her into the snow. And she did not want to be any colder than she was.

For a split second, as she nestled closer to the man, attempting not to be too obvious about it, she missed her old job. It was much less perilous and she was able to wear considerably prettier shoes. But then, if she hadn't been swept off into their adventure, she would never have had the potential to rub all the things she had seen into Dr. Wesley's face. Not that she was planning to. She just liked the idea of being _able_ to, should the opportunity ever present itself.

The monk was lengthening his stride at that point, and when Kagome looked backwards, she could no longer see the lower path. They had ascended into the clouds, and there was nothing to see through the vague fog that surrounded them. A vibrant flash of color against the snow, the monk was now running, his feet nimbly launching him from foothold to foothold, rock to rock, the path making its way vertical, more treacherous and impossible than before.

This was the way they went, for an hour or so, Taisho following easily, his movements calculated and graceful. Kagome, hanging all over the man's back, watched as Ash, shadowing his older brother's steps, took a more time to find his balance. His movements were not so quick, and his eyes remained on the rocks immediately before him. Taisho, on the other hand, did not need to look down, and found it in his best interest to keep his focus on the misty haze they traveled through.

Kagome felt the rise of his magic, a hum on his skin, tickling her even through all the layers of clothing she wore.

They broke through the clouds and her heart shuddered to a stop. The man's last leap had thrown them high, arching them over the path and as they crested the top of his jump, she saw the top of the world, the reaching hands of the earth, stretching towards the heavens, sun spotted and blue-shadowed, so magnificent she could not find the words to express her amazement.

As they floated back down from his spring, she knew something was wrong. The monk had led them to a leveling off of the route; the jagged rocks and vertical climb left below them. Now, they stood on snow, hugging the side of a mountain, a drop of thousands of feet to her right side.

By all rights they should have been running, but they were frozen, at a standstill.

Taisho suddenly released her legs and set her down, carefully, but his movements were hurried, alarming. On her feet Ash pulled her against the wall of the mountain, away from the hazardous drop.

Taisho was glowing against the blue of the sky, the pristine colorless substance beneath their feet. The claws on his hands lengthened and he shirked the thin jacket he wore, quickly adjusting the bindings of his belts and gear, checking the fastenings of his swords.

He turned to Kagome and studied her face. "Stay with Ash." Locking eyes with his younger brother, he said, quietly, clearly, "If an enemy appears within your range then you run. You _run_. You do not fight."

Ash nodded his understanding and Taisho and the monk took off around the curving bend, evaporating from their sight.

She looked up at Ash, and saw that he had drawn his own sword and was reaching to the rosary around his neck, holding it out from his body, as if he were to pull it over his head and unwind the length.

She strained to hear, strained to feel the disturbance, but could find nothing but the scream of the wind, the bitter cold of her body.

Ash looked at her, eyeing her bulky clothes. They both knew she would be unable to run let alone do much of anything. It was too cold, the air was too thin, she was too weak.

"Were we expecting company?" She asked between measured breaths.

Ash favored her with a cocky smile, "Kagome, We carry swords with us nearly wherever we go."

"Right, always expect the worst. In your case its murderous demons," she said, wishing they _didn't_ need to carry forged steel.

She stood against the mountain face, purposefully fixing her eyes on the man at her side, rather than on the drop, the deathly fall in front of her. She willed her lungs and heart to slow their instinctive quickening patter and sharp intakes of oxygen.

They waited, the minutes growing longer, her anxiety slowly beginning to fade, the knot in her middle loosening.

Then, where only the elements and the barest of nature lived, she heard the deafening cry of beast, the familiar ring of the nameless sword as it was grated against an enemy, a rock, a stone, the snow, the wind.

The path shook once and she leaned against the rock face, closing her eyes, praying to nothing and no one.

From the base of the earth they rose, the dark blotted mass, streaking through the clouds, the demon's spies.

She heard her own strangled cry and saw Ash take a step and raise his sword, pull one loop of the rosary over his head, and then she was blinded by the brilliant flash of light, the sound of ice and rock rending in two, and felt, through the raucous blend of noise and fear, the solid ground beneath her feet give way, and she was falling, falling, falling, falling.

Falling.


	21. Of Stories and Legends

**Chapter 21**

**Of Stories and Legends**

Sesshoumaru slipped around the narrow outcropping of the cliff, the heel of his foot sliding over the perilous nothingness as he pivoted and barreled forward, following the red robes of the monk before him.

The path they traveled was well hidden and thoroughly protected by ancient and powerful spells. It could not be easily stumbled upon by anyone. To find it, one would have to know what to look for. It was therefore, quite obvious that it was an enemy trespassing through the spells, blasting through the barriers and concealing enchantments.

He could not readily discern the aura of this foe, not through all the other magic hanging in the air and seeping through the rock and snow, but he knew it was there, a pervasive presence mingled with the infusion of sorcery.

The nameless sword hummed, thirsting for enemy blood, the same thirst maneuvering through his veins as a predatory nature overtook his reserve.

They curved around the path, the drop disappearing as the route weaved its way back into the rock of the mountains, closing in on all sides. The path seemed to turn _into_ the earth and they entered a sort of chasm, the sky above them disappearing into a jagged crack, zigzagging parallel to the primitive foot trail they followed.

Sesshoumaru stopped, peering up through the dark rock where the snow crept in, the faint flashing of the sun dancing across his face as the clouds moved. The dark grey shadows of the chasm were silent and frozen, like the landscape they wandered. The monk had stopped as well, and was peering at the split of earth, breathing evenly.

Sesshoumaru pulled his face down and fixed his eyes on the man, watching as a faint fiery glow enveloped his hands and rushed across the holy man's body, blending with the deep hues of his robes. The aged man lowered his head and their eyes met. Sesshoumaru gave the monk a single nod and then with a silent exchange, they thrust their powers skyward, blasting open the hairline crack to expose the path to the natural elements.

Through the descending rubble and the white sunlight that exploded inward, through the mingling of white and red sorcery bursting outward, a dark figure descended downward into the melee. Sesshoumaru gestured with his sword and with the blast of his power the ragged rocks around him fell away, affording him the room to move his feet.

The cavern was no more, nothing but a gaping hole to the sky, a perilous drop should either he or the holy man lose their fight. He narrowed his eyes, waiting, holding himself steady. Against the sunlight, the figure was nearly impossible to discern, but he was between Sesshoumaru and the monk, and in his opinion, was not in the most advantageous of positions for an enemy to be. Squinting, he held up his sword and waited for someone, anyone, to make the first move.

The edge of Daichi-sama blocked the harshest of the suns rays, and through the bitter light he could see the outline of a perfectly defined face, the sweeping arch of an elegant eyebrow, the inferno of indigo irises turning crimson.

He laughed quietly, wondering when his enemies would learn their lessons.

"Kagura."

The woman merely smiled and raised her fan, absently flicking the elegant object open, manipulating the elements around them to send the gale of the mountain toward the man. He raised his swords, crossing them in front of his face, white power rippling around his body, fanning hair out around his face, rippling through the snow at his feet, vibrating the air with its intensity, making the very mountain shudder under his power.

* * *

In the seconds before Inuyasha pulled the first loop of the rosary over his head, he cursed his brother for running ahead.

It was not, not, not, _not_, in his best interest to be facing a treacherous drop to the mountain floor. And it was certainly not in his best interest that he had a young woman, trussed in heavy layers, unable to move or fight, pressed against the rock, a prefect target for the enemies rocketing through the clouds.

The least Sesshoumaru could have done was taken them to a spot where the threat of falling to ones death was not one of their worries. Of course, Inuyasha admitted, if placed in immediate danger, Sesshoumaru expected him to run and take the girl with him, not stay and fight on the edge of a cliff.

His complaints about his brother were to be wasted thoughts, as in that moment, he saw the dark mass appear out of the clouds, screaming victory into the wind, to dive for them, a million wings and claws prepared for attack.

He pulled the first strand of the rosary over his head and felt the magic bound to his soul erupt with defiant fury. For the span of two heartbeats, he saw nothing but the blur of his own power. When his eyes cleared and the whirling magic around his body had receded back into the humble prayer beads wrapped around his throat, he saw the dark mass of the demon shell rocket out of the heavy clouds at their feet, to streak towards them, claws and teeth extended, ready to slice and kill. Dark magic pooled in the extended claws, flowing off of the wretched beast like heavy mist, like the black cloak on its back.

Inuyasha raised his sword, calling forth a barrier, hoping his magic would blend with the spells of the trail and protect both he and Kagome. His action did little to help them in the next moment.

The baleful magic was not aimed for them.

It streaked through the air, whipping and hissing with malignant force, and made contact just below their feet, underneath the overhangs of rock, crumbling the tenuous path of mountain ice.

Inuyasha felt the sturdy surface give way under his feet and he was falling, his heart thrust to his throat.

Reaction was quicker than fear, for he, before he could truly register the loss of his purchase, had reached for Kagome, already plummeting forward, propelled toward the edge with frightening momentum, and with the last amount of balance he maintained, shot to the side of the path, stumbling with the weight of girl in his arm.

The demon shell continued to assault them, and he hauled her up to her feet and pulled her along the path, shoving her in front of him, keeping the barrier at his back as steady as he could. With each pummeling of dark magic it weakened, and he reached again, took the next loop around his neck and pulled it over his head, releasing more of the angry magic from its cage deep inside.

His fingernails erupted into claws, his control slipped down a single notch, his fangs burst through his lips, drawing coppery blood, and his eyes blazed with a fiery umber, the barest, tinniest hint of crimson seeping into the deep depths.

Grabbing the back of Kagome's heavy coat, he threw her to the ground and stood over her, spinning to face the shell, hovering in the clouds, smiling its grim, deathly smile, its spies littering the sky, blotting out the sun.

Inuyasha raised his sword at the demon's shell and smiled. The old mantra of ancient words trickled down from his mind to his mouth, and he muttered them, over and over again, gaining control of his magic, channeling it into the wrought metal in his hand. His voice rose until he took a final breath, drawing in the piercing air that clung to his lungs as he shouted above the wind, and brought the sword down, sending an arc of power blasting through the winds and wings to slice across the demon shell, inflicting crackling energy blazing with pure light.

Useless, broken spies fell from the air, dead, rendered ineffective by Inuyasha's powerful attack, but the whipping tendrils of the demon had not slowed, and while he could sense a weakness from where his magic had connected, he had not ended their battle.

He chanced a look down to see that Kagome had rolled over in the snow and was stripping off her jacket.

"What the hell do you think you are doing?" He screamed at her, his eyes widening in disbelief. "You'll freeze to death!"

She pulled the jacket over her head and threw it aside, meeting his horrified gaze. "If I can't run then I'll die anyway. Look out!"

He turned in time to see the dark, hideous being throttle towards them, and he held up his black sword, gleaming against the sunlight. With the most careful precision, he sidestepped, bracing his free hand against the flat of the blade, preparing for the impact of the beast.

Ripping black claws scratched along the magical barricade and he dug his heels into the slick snow beneath his feet, gritting his teeth as he pushed forward physically and magically. The decaying face of the shell loomed before him, leering, deathly pale and frightening.

It hissed at him, incisors flashing, red eyes bleeding rage.

Years of anguish and fury surfaced, flashing before Inuyasha's eyes, dancing down into the empty place in his middle, the void that could not be filled. He reached out through his barrier and dragged his claws along the arm of the creature, drawing black blood, eliciting screams of anguish.

Seeing an opportunity, he thrust forward, nearly at the edge of the precipice, driving the metal into the chest of the creature. Angry tendrils of the dark cape snapped around and whipped toward him, bent on destruction.

He heard the change in the air, the moment before he saw the descent of the black winged creatures.

There were too many attacks, too few places to gain his footing.

He wrenched his blade out and prepared for the worst.

A force on his side slammed into him, knocking his breath from his body. He was knocked sideways into the snow, his concentration jostled as he hit the rough surface of the path. He felt himself, tangled with Kagome, sliding back down the trail, towards the gap in the mountain, the broken trail that fell into the deadly drop.

Behind them, the misguided attack of wings and powers glanced off the spot they had only just been positioned in, screams of rage coloring the air around them.

His hands reached out and scrambled for purchase, dragging claws across the frozen earth.

He saw the movement of the demon, the flurry of the winged beasts, floating above them, moving in for the kill as Inuyasha and Kagome slipped helplessly closer to the fall.

He reached up to his neck, agonizingly slow, eyes locked with the demon vessel, hesitation slicing through his mind, bringing him closer to fear, and with a prayer on the wind, he undid the third loop of the rosary and pulled it over his head.

* * *

Sesshoumaru felt the sorcery fuse with his sword and he raised his arm, slashing through the air, sending his magic ripping over the space in between he and his adversary. Kagura reached within her kimono, bringing forth a second fan. Before his attack reached her and tore her in two, she flicked her wrists and the fans within her hands, erecting a glowing barrier. His attack collided and merged, glowing light fusing and growing until it erupted, vibrating across the air, a thunderous clap of power.

The man grimaced as the magic ripped through the small enclave, the compact space they fought in. He stepped forward through the heavy haze of magic hanging in the air, clinging to the walls of the mountain.

Kagura, recovering from the blast of power, moved backwards, her body angled to the side, keeping both Sesshoumaru and the monk in her line of sight.

She moved, darting forward with a speed he had not expected of her. She raised her left hand she curled her wrist, turning the fan outward as her right hand lowered, the floral painted fan fluttering in a quick successive pattern.

Both he and the monk dodged the whisper thin blades of metal hurtling toward them. Sesshoumaru found the lack of foot space to be troublesome, and as he vaulted around the tunneling metal he connected with the sharp rock of the mountain. Ducking to the ground, he felt the blades whirl by, embedding into the rock, the place he had just stood.

Rising slowly, he kept his eyes on Kagura, waving her fans at him in a taunting display.

He could feel the movement of the demon shell just around the path, feel the surface of Inuyasha's power, hear the blast of the enemy's attack, the crumbling of the path as his brother and the girl scrambled for safety.

Damn it all.

He sheathed Daichi-sama and readied his magic, orbs of golden-white light appearing in his large palm, growing brighter with each second that passed.

The monk caught his eye and Sesshoumaru stalled his mounting attack. With bated breath and furious eyes, he observed the older man as he raised a hand, doused with crimson power. and all around them the mountain began to hum, the snow began to glow, and the wind began to die.

Kagura launched herself at Sesshoumaru and dropping her fans, she drew her sword. He watched her fly through the air, aiming for his heart. He stood, still, silent, watching the approach of steel, his golden eyes locking with her red.

The world slowed to a crawl.

Behind his enemy's arched and extended form he saw the monk crouch, his blazing palms burying into the snow, red light erupting over him, enveloping him entirely.

He looked back at the woman and saw triumph in her eyes, red lips widening, revealing a crazed, brutal smile.

The sword tip brushed against his chest and the world stopped turning.

* * *

Kagome felt Ash snag her as she toppled forward, so close to pitching over the crumbling trail.

Her eyesight turned in a dizzying tumble as she saw the edge rise to meet her before she felt herself thrown into the snow, death denied once again. Ice crystals fused to her eyelashes, her face firmly planted in the freezing earth.

She did not want to raise her head and see the being that had plagued her nightmares, the deathly sallow features, the lazy red eye.

No, no, no, no, she did not want to see it. Once was enough.

Why couldn't the demon just accept that they were going to kill him god damn it? They were. They would. She would live. Get up Kagome. She would live. Get up.

Ash hauled her upright and she was shoved up the slippery path, her legs heavy, brain refusing to send messages to her feet. It certainly didn't help that she was wearing one hundred and fifty pounds of clothing, or a weight that felt like something close to that.

All things were a whirl of color and confusion. She willed herself to run, but knew she could not, not with all the weight around her. It would drag her down, pull her off the cliff's edge, it would kill her before the cold.

Damn she hated being cold.

She felt herself shoved to the ground for a second time. As she lay facedown in the cold snow she ripped off her gloves to free her fingers. Trembling digits fumbled with the fastenings of the heavy jacket, pressed into the ground. She felt Ash move to stand above her, his power flowing in the air around him, surging with nervous intensity.

She had little time to contemplate the words he was yelling above the scream of the wind, nor did she have time to turn and see if he had rid them of their enemy. It was a struggle enough to find her way out of the clothing she wore.

Was it ironic that she was going to die of exposure rather than by the sword? Was it ironic that it was an article of clothing meant to save her life was impeding her flight, her survival?

Bordering on hysteria, she rolled over and sat up, ripping her arms out of their imprisonments.

She looked upwards at the figure standing over her and found that while fear was the foremost emotion on her mind, it was followed closely by utter astonishment.

The man who looked down at her, who was screaming at her, asking her what the hell was she thinking taking off her clothing in the cold, was _not_ the infinitely rude man she had been introduced to and traveled next to.

His hair was bright silver, like his brother's, claws protruding from long fingers, fangs glistening between his lips. Vaguely, she noted that he had unwound his rosary and it hung down his chest, one loop still wrapped tight around his neck.

She opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but her brain took another route of speech.

"If I can't run, I'll die anyway!" Her eyes were directed upwards at the moving darkness, the enemies that absolutely refused to die and leave them in peace. The demon shell smiled, flashing incisors at her, tensing just before it dove for them, its spies careening in its wake. "Look out!"

She was breathing shallowly, unable to draw a deep breath, her lungs screaming from the high mountain air, her brain fuzzy with the lack of oxygen.

Ash turned back around and raised his sword just as the adversary reached him, feral claws raking across the barrier, so dangerously close to them. Kagome searched through the numbing cold, trying to find a reasonable thing to do. There were not many things bound by reason, not many she could perform while she slowly descended into hypothermia, while she faced an adversary much greater than she, while she balanced on the tip of the precipice overlooking all of the life below. She wished for a sword and the skills to use one, or rather, some sort of weapon that would obliterate all of her enemies in a single blow.

Since she had no such weapon and since also, at that very moment, she was about to be assaulted and most likely killed by their numerous enemies, Kagome found that the only sensible thing to do was find the strength she needed to stand and push Ash away from the sweep of black wings and claws and death and falls.

They collided painfully, and fell back to the path, slipping downwards, back to the destructed portion of the trail. As they skidded toward the break in the rock path, Kagome decided that she would not try and save anyone again anytime soon. She was freezing, she was shaking in her numbness, they were sliding off of the mountain, and their enemies were still not dead.

Damn it. Damn it.

She had expected to live longer than this. She had survived everything else so far, why did she have to die now? Now of all times, when she was finally ready to handle her quest. Why?

She felt Ash move his hand to his neck and pull the last loop of the rosary over his head.

The air changed, breathing became even more difficult, practically nonexistent. The man disentangled himself from her and stood to face the enemies hanging in the voided air, readying their final attack.

Through black hair and white snow, she saw his sword pulse with angry golden light and she heard him say, with a voice that echoed of an untamed beast, to run, to get up and run to his brother.

As the blast of gold lit the mountainside she pulled herself up for a final time and hugged the cliff face, her fingers reaching ahead of her, feeling for purchase. She could see nothing in the mingling haze of white clouds and golden magic, but she trusted the power that washed over her, trusted that Ash knew what he was doing. She did not have any other choice but to run, again, as always, searching for a safer place to be.

And at that moment, there was none safer than Taisho.

Kagome swallowed hard, the heavy boots on her feet hampering the speed at which she could move, but she was freer without the layers, better able to maneuver against the treacherous path.

The rocks under her fingertips warmed, singing a song of protection for their small band of warriors. It was as if a thousand voices were raised to defend them, to keep them and hold them fast, not yet resigned to lose the stoic warlord, the insolent younger brother, the lost museum assistant, the aged monk.

The protective spells lining the path hummed once more as Kagome turned the bend in the trail. She nearly sobbed in relief as she saw the end of the perilous drop, the back of her Protector.

She slid to a stop when she saw the enemy vaulting toward Taisho, a sword raised, aimed at his chest.

He was just standing there, waiting.

The blade loomed closer, shinning with the light of the sun, and he just stood there.

She could not think through the fear that gripped her, winding its way through her mind as a single thought descended to claim her consciousness.

He was going to die.

She wanted to scream for him to do something, but she could not move, could only watch as the tip of the blade touched the front of his chest, the power behind it rippling the air, burning it with hatred.

_No_.

The mountain exploded into white light as the snow, the rocks littering the trail, the enemies before and behind them were blasted skyward, pulled away from the four.

Relief.

She watched as the woman brandishing the gleaming sword was pulled, as if gravity had reversed itself, up into the blue of the sky, rocketed backward, miles through the sky, borne on the magic of the mountain, before she melted into the sun, a tiny shadow against the world below.

Ash ran up behind her, breathing raggedly, his eyes wild with wonder as he stared at the floating debris, carried off by the wind, mingling with the black wings and furious cries of the demon's shell.

There was a moment of silence before a noiseless explosion rocked the foundation of the earth, the merging sorcery of the inhabitants of the monastery blotting out the enemies, erasing them from the earth.

Or so she hoped.

Kagome, through a bleary haze, turned to study the young man at her side. He was gasping for breath, his power fluctuating, making her nauseous, carrying her on a tumultuous ride of senses and feelings.

Taisho turned to them and sheathed his sword.

Walking up to his brother, he regarded him with a cool, commanding air. "You will regain control this instant."

Ash nodded wearily and purposefully slowed his breathing, sheathing his sword and winding the rosary back around his neck. As the first loop curled around, his alarming power receded into stability. The second loop cured him of his claws and fangs. And the third and final winding of the ancient wooden rosary returned his hair to midnight black, his sorcery completely in check, locked and caged by some greater power.

She could not wonder aloud about this amazing development, for her body was shuddering and shivering too much to voice any thought, let alone that one. Taisho turned to her then, the faintest trace of a frown darkening his demeanor.

"Why did your remove your gear?"

She chattered at him helplessly, holding her arms around herself.

Ash answered for her. "She couldn't run and we probably would have died if she hadn't taken off all that weight and thrown herself at me in her stupidity."

She nodded and tried to muster a smile, because she was dearly glad that she had not died, and did not really want Taisho to be furious at her for putting her life in danger by taking off her god forsaken jacket.

The man glowered but said nothing. He gestured absently to Ash who quickly removed his own flimsy apparel. Kagome would have protested had Taisho not silenced her with a thunderous look. He took the thin cloth and wrapped her in its oversized space. And then, he hoisted her up onto his back, her hands finding the warm alcove of his skin and neck, his hands wrapping around her legs, drawing her in as close as physically possible.

Kagome's heart stopped.

Taisho turned to the monk and spoke quickly, tightening his hold around her shivering body. And then they were off and running.

Through the burning chill she heard Ash speak. "What's wrong with her?"

"Short of the freezing cold?" Taisho snapped, angrily. Ash remained silent. "The air is too thin for her. She was hyperventilating and successfully losing consciousness."

Kagome was very detached by this point and this was both a combination of her freezing limbs and the simple fact that she was once again wrapped around the strangely enticing protectors.

She knew he would have been very smug indeed had he been able to see the furious blush that rose on her cheeks through the wind burned skin. But the man was preoccupied, and she was sure he could see no humor in the situation, given the murderous feelings emitting from his person.

She, however, floating loftily in a haze of bitter warmth and fearsome cold, was sure she would be able to revisit the last part of their most recent adventure with more than a fair share of laughter.

Sometimes, she thought sleepily, sometimes, she really was ridiculous. Panicking over a coat, feeling a morbid embarrassment at being so unceremoniously wrapped around the most handsome man she had ever met… _really_!

"Kagome." Unpleasant jostling. "Kagome."

"Mmmmhmm?"

"Wake up. Now."

Why was he always telling her what to do?

"Why?"

She heard him exhale, her ear to his neck, his hair tickling her very cold face.

"Because you might die if you become colder than you are. And I will not have the Protector of my sword perish because she was foolish."

She felt indignation rise through exhaustion. "My foolishness saved your brother's life."

"His foolishness nearly lost you yours. Do not make me use my claws."

Kagome's eyes snapped open. "I liked you better when I thought you were nothing but a billionaire trying to ask me out to dinner," she snapped groggily.

"I did ask you out to dinner."

She sighed. "I know, I meant- never mind. If I finish that sentence I will regret it when I regain all of the remnants of my mind."

She turned her head, resting it on Taisho's broad shoulder, and looked out over the path. The trail sped by underneath them. They were making quick time. Ash was just behind Taisho, looking a little worse for the wear, and the monk was still in front of them, leading them onwards.

"Were those spells of the trail that rid us of our problems?"

"Yes. Onigumo, the wretch-"

"Don't forget cowardly," she chimed in.

He growled incoherently, "Once again underestimated what who he was up against. He sent his minion, the demoness, Kagura, whom I have battled before. Not only do I know both her strengths and weaknesses, I was the one who killed her, so many lifetimes ago. That he sent his weakest threats say he expected us to blunder."

Kagome sighed, feeling the need to point out, "Well, we very nearly did."

"No, _we_ did not. It would have been handled, Miss Higurashi. You forget we have been warriors for lifetimes. Losing such an insignificant fight would not have ever crossed my mind."

"Well, _you_ might not have lost, but I almost died, _again_."

He laughed against the wind, his hands still gripping her legs, filling her with nervous unease. "Whose fault is that but your own? Ash could have protected you without your idiotic removal of your gear. You do not need to put yourself in such danger. We already have enough to handle, Miss Higurashi."

Kagome quite agreed. But, despite the truth of his words, she felt disappointment well in her heart, and it was not until later that she realized he had reverted, once again, to formality. She could not directly say why this bothered her so, except she knew she liked the way her name sounded when it came from his lips.

While she wrestled with pangs of loss she fell into silence and a sleepy consciousness, allowing the conversation to lull, just in case he chose to wake her again by speaking her name.

* * *

Inuyasha watched the back of the girl, resting her head on his brother's shoulder. Her arms lay loosely over his shoulders, hands pink, small cuts dotting the smooth flesh of her palms. He studied Sesshoumaru as the man hitched her up higher on his back, on of his hands leaving her legs to pull her exposed hands into the warmth of his chest.

The merciful action struck Inuyasha as something quite out of the ordinary, but then, given whom Sesshoumaru was dealing with, it was not surprising the man adjusted his normal stoic neglect to something just short of indifferent interest. Kagome seemed to shape the world and those in it, differently. She was not much like anyone he had met before.

He hardly knew her at all, had only succeeded in insulting her and barely protecting her from death, but it seemed that he could do nothing but recognize her bizarre way of relating to people and the way she responded to their situation.

He didn't know many people who would sacrificially throw themselves at the man who had repeatedly injured their pride, thus preventing grievous injury and maybe, perhaps, even saving his life. He didn't really want to acknowledge her actions, but it was very difficult not to do so.

After all, it had been an obvious display of bravery. Though, he admitted, her sanity at that moment could have been questionable, given she was not quite herself in the high mountain air.

But that didn't even seem to matter because he had already felt the change within himself, the acceptance of her fortitude. With admission of her character came the understanding that Sesshoumaru had been _right_ to trust her and that Inuyasha had been completely _wrong_ for any of his suspicious thoughts.

Normally, being proven wrong did nothing but raise his exasperation, but in this case, he was so very _wrong_ that he felt nothing short of shameful.

Tiredly, he waded through his thoughts, flinging them about in his mind with careless heed. Sesshoumaru and the monk were farther ahead than he, rushing toward the monastery as worry and duty snapped at their heels.

Inuyasha was anxious as well, but not nearly as much as his brother, whose crackling power had not died from their initial fight and spread about him like invisible wings, majestic and deadly, warning all that he was not to be bothered. Inuyasha would have, perhaps, been more inclined to fret over the Protector's life had he not realized some time prior to that moment, that she was infinitely stubborn and would not let something so trivial as snow and cold mortally wound her.

Lost in his musings, he hardly noticed when they slipped through an especially narrow part of the trail and broke out into the sunlight. There, they halted momentarily, drinking in the sight before them, magnificent and magical.

They had entered an opening in between the mountain crags, a deep rift running lengthwise across the trail. Where the path stopped, a vibrant red bridge was erected, connecting the two sides of the pathway. And there, nestled against the mountain, built _into_ the dark earth in the distance, partially hanging over into the dark abyss was the monastery.

It gleamed of crimson, black, and gold, its tiered levels rising up to the sunlight and snow. Behind it, the mountain continued to ascend, the summit far reaching, nowhere close to the established sanctuary. Heavy, white clouds hung in the air, touching the very tip of the monastery roof, gliding over the thick walls built around its base.

The men, after a cursory examination of the area, ran forward and crossed the bridge. Inuyasha took a moment to gaze at the dark fall below, shuddering as he saw the full extent of its depth. Blue-black rock of fissures, cracks and jutting boulders plummeted into white snow, littering the very bottom of the chasm, so far from where he stood. He looked upwards, pulled out of his reverie by the sound of disturbed, falling rock, deafening in the protective quiet of the area.

Sesshoumaru and the monk were making their way up the last snowy incline, nearly at the doors of the monastery. Inuyasha chanced one more furtive glance at the chasm.

To him, the cavernous gouge in the mountain was nothing more than a physical manifestation of what he felt in his heart. Empty, endless, jagged, broken.

He turned and stepped off the bridge, trailing the wake of the great being and his tiny lifeline.

* * *

Sesshoumaru was once again undeniably livid, vexed beyond reasonable doubt. Kagome Higurashi was the most… the most… the most… _damn it all_, the amount of times he had already had to save her life.

She was infuriating.

She had not backed down from her accepted task. No, she took it more seriously than he hoped she would.

_Throwing_ herself at Inuyasha to _save_ him. Removing her coat so she could _survive_.

Not that any of that had done any good, because her bravery did not counteract her frailty. She was still subject to every hurt that all humans were, and as a result, she was now wrapped around him in a completely awkward, but he could admit, pleasing, tangle of Kagome.

He was tangled. In Kagome.

Well, that was certainly true. He had been from the moment they met.

She shifted absently, and he shook her lightly, making sure she was still awake.

"_What is it_?" She cried hoarsely, her hands fisting against his chest.

He swallowed the scratching laugh her reaction elicited from him. There were times, like this one, where, in the midst of peril, she had an unfounded ability to be surprising.

"You are not asleep."

She pulled away from the shoulder she had commandeered as her own and leaned forward, looking him plainly in the face; her cheeks still a bright, nearly fluorescent shade of pink. But her eyes, shimmering green with evil wit and humor, were sharp, and with this, he knew she would live past this experience, live to torment him, live to be surprising again and again.

"No, Mr. Taisho, I am not asleep, I am regaining the feeling of my limbs and head and my disinclination toward you." He raised an eyebrow and she sighed, laying her head back down on his shoulder. "That's a lie, I apologize. I don't mind you so much," she said softly, although begrudgingly.

Strange.

Peculiar even.

Odd, really, that those words should lodge themselves in his mind, to pick and gnaw past his carefully preserved reticence. She had succeeded in accidentally removing his reserve before, but this time, her actions were conscious. The words were chosen, she spoke freely, and he was trying to pick through the immediate thoughts her words had stirred up in his mind.

He would have, for once, liked the opportunity to pursue these particular ideas, but could not, given they were steadily advancing on the giant doors of the monastery. The last few steps of the climb were slick and he heard Inuyasha fall in behind them, cursing under his breath.

The monk halted before the gates, gazing up at their mammoth height, towering above the four companions. Sesshoumaru studied the girth of wooden barrier, his eyes taking in the abnormal purple hue of the wood, the markings carved deep into the smooth surface. The words were chiseled in hundreds of different languages, some he recognized, others he did not, but all, every last one he could read, were meant for the same purpose: to protect.

The vermillion-clad monk raised a hand and placed it against the barrier, closing his eyes as he leaned his weight against the door. Slowly, as his aura flared with power and spilled onto the weathered surface, the doors responded, creaking, buckling with gentle insistence. The holy man opened his eyes and smiled gently at the girl draped on Sesshoumaru's back.

"We have arrived," he said quietly. Turning, he pushed open the doors, which, by all rights, should have been far too heavy for the elder man. But they opened, as easily as if they were made of feathers; air light and whisper thin, instead of the thick fashioning of wood.

The gates swung open to reveal a courtyard, large and empty, clear of any living soul. Above them, the upper ramparts of the monastery gleamed, flags waving in the wind, tied from each pinnacle, running up and down, back and forth through the intricate layout of the magnificent edifice. Red towers and pillars, balconies and buttresses soared above, like a mountains themselves, gleaming black roofs reflecting the faint, indistinct glare of the sun through the thick, white clouds.

Sesshoumaru stepped across the threshold, his eyes taking in everything at once, making mental notes, where the walls were weak, how to vault over the bulwark if needed, where he could easily scale the rooftops, the balconies, how to escape the inside, should everything fall.

Against his back, Kagome's breathing had become even, her body relaxing in his hold. He flexed his claws and dug them into her legs, deep enough to startle her, but not enough to draw blood.

"Damn it to the depths of _hell_, Taisho! I only closed them for a minute."

Following the monk through the even ground of the courtyard he could not fight back the rising tides of his misgivings. Though they had been compelled to this place, it did not mean they were safe. Not for a single moment did he believe it to be so.

"Do not fall asleep. I have already told you I will use my claws if necessary."

She muttered something vehemently, and since he thought he might feel guilty should her words cause him to dump her on the ground, he decided it would not be best to ask her to repeat herself.

The monk led them into the overhanging shadows of the monastery, and they disappeared into the magical overture, the sorcery that tingled along every wooden beam, every fiber of dirt, through each wooden panel, each wall, the overarching power spiraling outward in ever direction, fusing deep into the mountain, through the chasm dividing one world form another, until everything was nothing but a part of something else, and the world turned again, as an insolent young museum assistant, stirred in the arms of her Protector.

* * *

Sesshoumaru closed the shoji screen behind him, stepping out into the empty hallway, his eyes darting through the relative darkness, searching for the people he knew existed, just outside his sight.

Kagome had been cared for and had, as was a reoccurring theme with their journey, been put to bed to rest and regain lost strength. He was leaving her room then, had stayed until he was assured of her safety and her health before he decided it was all right to leave her. His room was directly next to hers, separated by nothing more than a thin divider, and Inuyasha had been situated across the quiet hall, satisfying his desire to keep the girl safe.

He stood for a moment, shadowy, a rough-hewn man, wrought from wars and battles, training and stone. He hesitated, waiting to see if the subject of his search would come to him, would appear out of the nothingness and reveal all.

He snorted derisively, because even while an apparent providence had guided him to stand in that very spot, he knew the man the Mage once was, far too well. That man had been neither omnipotent nor omniscient. He had been immensely suited for magical purposes, powerful, yes, intelligent in all things beguiling and bewitching. But, he was not the type of man who would advise and guide. He never had been, and as far as Sesshoumaru was concerned, the Mage never would be.

When the man failed to appear, Sesshoumaru resigned to seek him out. This would not be too terribly difficult, he admitted, flaring his senses outward, searching for the one distinct aura among many. It was different than he remembered, the familiar power, but it was not altered so much that he was unable to recognize it.

At the end of the quiet hallway he found the simple wooden stairs, leading upward to the next level, and all subsequent floors above. Up and up he went, passing the sleeping quarters, the prayer rooms, the meditation quarters, until, he was at the summit, and looked out over the pitch black mountains, hidden by the depth of the night except for the vague patches of moonlight that filtered down and illuminated the ice and snow with grey fingers, stretching into the deepest crevasses, lighting the highest crags.

The wind had died down and everything was tranquil and quiet, serene and peaceful, all that a monastery should have been. Except for the foreboding knowledge of their dire enemies, that was. Everything was right except for that.

Paused in an open, empty room at the upper most parts of the sanctuary, he waited. His eyes trailed down to the floor. The tatami mat beneath his feet had seen many years of wear and tear, no doubt the monks used the space for prayer, as the walls were composed of shoji screens thrown wide, the view spectacular. The floors extended out onto sprawling balconies, and there, standing braced against the wooden frames of the railings, was a solitary figure, tired and familiar.

He watched the man's back, old memories returning, a lifetime coming to claim him even as he tried to outrun it. He stepped forward until he was standing but a few feet behind the man.

"You've come a long way, Sesshoumaru."

Sesshoumaru's head rose, his given name a reminder of royalty and power, rolling over him to pry into the secret parts of him, those that he chose to forget and cast to the edge of the oceans, the depths of hell.

His name, how it thundered around in his head to torment, bring the lost face before his eyes. It ripped a jagged hole down his middle. That something so close to him could bring him so near to ruin was traitorous and rebellious. Even while he wished to deny his name, he knew he could never shirk it. It was _him_. He was Sesshoumaru.

He walked a very thin, high line between who he was and who he should have been, and often found, that the two sides blurred into neither. And he was left with the end sum of the past and the present. He was Sesshoumaru, and he could never outrun that.

Perhaps, sensing the inner turmoil of the great man, the Mage turned, dark eyes twinkling, as they always had.

His hair had gone white, but his face, remarkably, held age without the wear of time. A few lines, radiating out from the corner of his eyes, centered around the invisible smile that was drawing at his lips. He was wrapped in indigo and deep dark purples, the robes falling gracefully around his shoulders to hang to the floor. And as was customary, tinkling around his wrists, were the golden bracelets he used for his magic, the items he drew and fused his power with.

There was a greater wisdom around him now that had been lacking when last they met. It was strange, that quiet intelligence kindling in his eyes.

"I had forgotten. You do not wish to be addressed as such," he said dreamily, smiling so brightly his eyes disappeared into narrowed, gleaming slits.

Sesshoumaru remained stiff, displeasure palpable. He had forgotten the Mage's ability to be anything but utterly unfazed and amused. Nothing seemed to dispel the natural bemusement surrounding him. Nothing. Not death, not destruction, not chaos, or fear. Nothing.

How infuriating.

"But, then, perhaps, it is high time you accept it back." Sesshoumaru murmured indistinctly, a warning note creeping into the unspoken words. "What does a monk know, though?" The man added to appease.

"Surely nothing more than a mage," he answered quietly, carefully, golden brilliance narrowed, like a beacon, holding the Mage in his place, refusing to let him slip back inside, where he could hide from Sesshoumaru, as he did so well.

"Of course not, neither claim to know much, and much neither know."

The man smiled again and Sesshoumaru felt like slicing him in half. He should have been dead anyway, which brought him to, "Why are you still alive?"

The Mage threw back his head and laughed, deep and full, breaking the holy silence with his exhilaration.

"Sesshoumaru!" He wheezed through his laughter. "Sesshoumaru Taisho, Greatest Warlord of the Western Lands, you are the one and only thing in this world that does not change." He laughed himself hoarse, bending at the knees, lowering his head to breathe, while Sesshoumaru grew increasingly annoyed. When the Mage had finally controlled his laughter he looked toward the tall, silver figure, his smile kindling into an older emotion, one that spanned the ages. "But, then," he mused out, studying the weapons attached to the warlord, "even the immovable stones are weathered down to something new, who am I to say what you are? Who was I ever?"

"You were the Mage. Are you still?"

Sesshoumaru turned and walked to the railing, gazing up at the moon, waiting for the answer that would determine his trust.

"No, no I am not. I am no longer simply, 'The Mage'. Though, admittedly, I was never that. I had a name once. I am more than an application of my former powers."

Sesshoumaru shrugged, the slightest of movements, his large hands moving to grasp the cool wood of the railing. "What you and I were is best left to stories and legends."

The man at his side gestured absently, his face deepening into dark worry. "But we were something else once, in the past, and the past lead us here."

"Regardless."

The mage sighed and leaned against the wooden barrier; threading his fingers together he hunched his shoulder, age and time weighing him down.

"I am still alive, Taisho, because I have a job to do."

He slanted a look down at the white head, eyebrow arching. "And what would that job be?"

Their eyes met. "Assisting the Protector, of course."

Sesshoumaru released the tightly wound anxiety, allowing it to spill out into the night, melting into the essence. "You have not lost your sense of duty then."

"Was there ever doubt that I had misplaced it?"

Sesshoumaru allowed himself a small smile. "You often misplaced things if I recall."

Falling into silence, they watched the movement of the night, each following old paths in his mind.

"She is well, then, the Protector?"

Sesshoumaru laughed contemptuously. "Well and spiteful, be assured."

"She gives you hell. The sword did well, then, to choose her. You have it too easy I think." Sesshoumaru drew his sword then, startling the Mage. The man frowned at the warlord, displeased. "Must you threaten me so?" Sesshoumaru merely studied his blade, enjoying the way the soft, pale moonlight danced over its dark metal. "Let me see it then, as I am certain, this is the sole reason you came to see me."

With the greatest care, Sesshoumaru lowered the blade to the outstretched hands, wondering how the blade would react in the arms of another. As the sword touched the Mage's opened hands, it hummed gently, pleasantly, and Sesshoumaru felt the stab of betrayal.

Of course the nameless sword would react calmly. It would only test him, the wielder of the blade. _Of course._ How obvious.

"I see." He studied the blade for a moment more before returning it to its master.

Sesshoumaru held it in his hands, weighing it, running his eyes along the familiar flat, the missing circle, the arching tip. It never ceased to draw his praise.

"Taisho."

Lost in his examination he murmured absently, "What is it?"

"We have more worries than the demon."

He looked up from the blade, hardening, falling away, returning to himself, pulling up the barriers, the duty, recalling the reason for surviving.

"Explain."

The Mage shook his head, sorrow, regret, pain, and loss settling over and through him, changing him again, before Sesshoumaru's eyes.

"I watch from the pinnacle of the world as old, ancient magic disappears from a thousand places at once. There was a time when we lived, we were threatened, certainly, we had wars, we died, all of us, the mages, the sorcerers, the spirits, the demons," he cast a pointed look at Sesshoumaru, "the warlords. But, we survived." He laughed sardonically, shaking his head, disgust contorting his features. "Humans may have moved in on our territories, we may have willingly moved to the shadows, but ultimately, it was not them, the mortals, the ones _without_ power, who began to dwindle our numbers." His shoulders slumped and doom filled the space between the old companions.

"The demon is no longer our worst fear. But it is our first." He held his hand up in front of his face, the golden bracelets slipping downward to rest together, grouped about his forearms, his magic rising to meet the night, to meet the day, to meet their enemies, to thwart and save, as best he could, his last duty before he passed onward. "They are amassing, the enemies, the ones you have not so readily kept your eyes on. And you must know, Sesshoumaru, that when the demon falls, they will remain, and they will come after you, all of you. They will come and they will take the world with it."

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_Working diligently on future chapters. Thanks for reading! _


	22. Fuchsia

_Gah. So sorry for the "new chapter". ffnet deleted the wrong chapter and i had to re-upload. So, I apologize. Also, some interest was expressed in an e-mail alert. Since ffnet already has it's own new chapter alert I don't know how many of you would be interested in one, but if you are, e-mail me and tell me so. Thanks for reading and reviewing!_

**_This chapter is dedicated to Regan. Because she is amazing and deserves to be in a romantic novel, however drivel filled. _**

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**Chapter 22**

**Fuchsia**

Aeron hovered near his car; staring up at the apartment complex, fighting between his common sense and his frequent, baseless worries.

He was being ridiculous. This was ridiculous. This was silly. This was not how he meant to spend his afternoon, standing, no, looming, outside Kagome's apartment complex. He slapped his hand on the roof of his car, worrying away the minutes, staring at the stairs leading to the second floor where her apartment was.

He held the crumpled paper up in front if his face, his eyes narrowing as he read the address again, guilt as ice in his middle. He'd scrounged through her file again. He hadn't meant to. That wasn't what he had opened it for, he reassured himself. No, he had been looking for her address, that was true, but not so he could go stand in the parking lot and stare. No, not at all. He had been looking for her address so he could mail her last paycheck, the one she had never claimed.

And, well, when he stumbled upon the address he had been plagued, again, with nervous agitation.

Anymore, he wasn't sure how close they had been. He was more than certain they had not been very close, but it seemed, in the past few weeks, his memories of the young woman had become rather fuddled, merging together into an indiscernible mess of recollection. He thought they might have been friends, enough to warrant his unnecessary worry, but he could not be certain.

Because, damn it, she was nowhere to be found and could not confirm or deny their status as friends or work acquaintances.

"This is stupid," he muttered under his breath, casting an apprehensive eye around the parking lot, hoping no one had called the police about the shady character muttering to himself, alone in the car port.

Dark hair fell across his glasses and he scowled, feeling particularly riled by this time. Mostly, he was furious with himself, but some of his anger found its way to the errant young museum assistant, apparently lost to the great wide world.

What kind of a person just jetted off to parts unknown without telling someone?

Well, chimed the reasonable voice in his head, she could have told someone, but that someone might not have been him. Why would it have been?

Which brought him back to the befuddling and confusing circumstances surrounding his relationship with Kagome. Which, ultimately, brought him back to why he was still standing, frozen, next to his car.

He was going to drive himself insane. Literally insane. If he wasn't already, that was.

So what if he was worried that the legend she had told him was true, that was just his own imagination, running wild and free when it should have been sitting calmly where it belonged, crunching numbers? So what? It didn't mean he had fallen off the deep end, that he worried some huge threat had claimed the girl and her pointy, uncomfortable shoes. No, that was a product of cabin fever, those fantastic, extravagant, irrational thoughts. Who wouldn't dream a little at a dull place like Worthington Museum?

He could not name many people who wouldn't. Though, those he could name already worked at the establishment.

Mentally, he brought his foot down, resolving to make the few steps that were needed to cross the parking lot, walk up the stairs and find Kagome's apartment. She'd be there, he knew. She'd open up her door and surprise, followed quickly by a sarcastic eyebrow raise, would alight her face. She'd take the check and they'd have a good laugh about something Dr. Wesley had done in her absence, and then… and then he would leave, assured that his friend… yes, his friend… was perfectly fine. Not dead. Not kidnapped. Not anything but perfectly fine.

He pushed away from his car and squared his shoulders, and pushing his glasses up the long bridge of his nose, he strode forward, determination set, resolved.

Across the parking lot.

Up the stairs, long legs stretching.

Around the corner.

Apartment… 201.

There it was, an entirely nondescript door, sitting harmlessly in its frame. He walked toward it and stopped, his hand poised to knock on the white painted wood.

He had never thought a solitary door would send him into such frenzy. He could not bring himself to rap his knuckles across the surface, was afraid of the foreboding quiet behind the door.

Surely, someone like Kagome would be listening to the music of a band he could not name, cooking, reading, or being loud and clumsy.

But there was not a sound, nothing from behind the door. He strained, hoping to catch the muffled shuffle of a footstep, the soft voice of the television. But he could only make out the distant sounds of the cars on the streets, the sound of the tires as they splashed through the deep puddles on the roads.

The air hung heavy around him and his tongue was thick with words he could not utter.

He let his hand fall against the wood, the harp, hollow sound startling him, making him jump, his glasses sliding down his nose as he jerked.

Realizing that a single, useless tap was not going to alert anyone inside the apartment as to his presence outside the apartment, he raised his hand and knocked a quick, successive pattern of raps.

He waited.

And then knocked again, louder.

She could be in shower. Or sleeping. Or, perhaps she would walk up behind him and throw a barbed comment at him, which would be cushioned by the playful twinkle in her eye.

He knocked again, a seed of despair taking root just below his heart.

He tried again, and again, waiting patiently between each round of knocks.

Nothing.

Damn it.

"Excuse me."

Aeron whirled around, startled, nearly falling back into the door, his heart in his throat.

When his eyes fell on a middle-aged woman, shaped exactly like an overgrown pear, dressed, squeezed into a fuchsia dress shaped thing, he thought, definitely not Kagome.

For one, unless she had, in her weeks from Worthington, suddenly lost all interest in keeping herself up, the young woman had always had better taste in her manner of dress than fuchsia things. And, two, this woman was not Kagome, plain and simple.

Crestfallen, he blinked rapidly, and fumbling with his glasses he asked, "Pardon?"

The woman, who, along with believing fuchsia was a good color for her complexion, also seemed to be under the misguided impression that applying large amounts of vibrant red lipstick to her mouth was compelling and attractive. Aeron, who had never once considered himself a slave to fashion, beat down the urge to wince, and the woman raised a dark eyebrow at him, eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Were you looking for somebody?"

Aeron thought for a moment. Yes, yes he had been.

Who-where- what was he-

Thoroughly distracted he glanced down at the crumpled paper in his hand, Kagome's name scrawled just above the address.

"Ah," he laughed nervously and glanced back at the splotch of pear shaped color before his eyes, "It just so happens I am looking for someone!" He pointed over his shoulder to the door. "Do you know the woman who lives here?"

The pear woman thought for a moment, looking him up and down through her heavy, fake eyelashes, before sighing and saying, "Yeah, what's her face. Could never pronounce her name right," she laughed, and his nerves grated, "it was something foreign, right?"

Aeron felt his good nature and nervousness evaporate. "Yes," he muttered wearily, "her name is Kagome. Kagome Higurashi."

"That's the girl. I know her."

His heart leapt. "You know her? Do you know where she is?"

The woman placed two pudgy hands on her hips, hidden somewhere in the folds of her hideous, shapeless, fuchsia dress. "I'm the landlady, I know everything about everyone."

This was disconcerting. Aeron certainly didn't want his landlord knowing everything about him. Mentally, he shook himself. "Well, then, do you know where she is?"

The woman shrugged, "Don't know where she went, but you're too late to have caught her. She's gone."

Aeron felt the world break in half. Gone? What did that mean?

"How," he swallowed the building rock in his throat, "how do you mean?"

The landlady pursed her crimson lips, "She left, gone, bags packed, took her dog with her. Gone."

Gone.

"And you have no idea where?"

The landlady snorted and shifted on her feet. "I may know about my tenants, but once they leave, I can't hardly know anything, can I?"

Aeron shook his hanging head, pushing his glasses back up his nose. "I suppose not."

"She left with a man though."

His head shot up. "What did he look like?"

Startled by the strength of his words, she took a step back, the determination in his eyes seeming to fuse with the air she was breathing, becoming heavy and angry.

"Tall, handsome, strange."

Tall. Handsome. Strange.

Taisho.

"Light hair, gold brown eyes, impeccable suits?"

She nodded, smiling dreamily, "That's the one."

Damn it.

He chewed on the inside of his check and crossed his arms over his rumpled dress shirt and tie, dark brows drawn together in a somber frown. Slowly, he looked up and met the woman's curious eyes. "She-she wanted to go then?" He asked haltingly.

"Didn't seem to be complaining too much when she paid for the next 3 months rent."

Damn it.

"Actually," the woman said, her eyes roaming the ceiling, chin tipping upwards as she thought, "I think he paid for it."

Aeron balked. "He paid for it?"

Well, that didn't make sense at all. She couldn't, they couldn't, not in a day they couldn't, she didn't… no. That wasn't Kagome.

"You know her well, Kagome what's her face?"

Aeron sighed and his shoulders slumped in defeat. "I-"

Had he known her well?

No, not really, but he knew her well enough to like her, to worry for her, to hope she was safe.

Enough to want to know her better.

Enough to take a chance.

But, he supposed, sighing into the afternoon, sometimes just enough was not quite as much as enough.

"I know her a little." The woman studied him, hands on her hips, fuchsia dress blinding his sight. "Thank you for your time," he mumbled, before slipping past her.

He had only taken two steps when her voice halted him in his tracks.

"It's too bad," she said softly, wistfully, knowingly.

"What is?"

He heard a crackling laugh, without rancor or malice. "You seem like a nice guy. It's too bad she chose the other guy."

Aeron, disturbed by her words, looked over his shoulder, "What?"

The woman shrugged helplessly, "I don't know. I thought, you know, you standing out in the parking lot, for an hour, that maybe you were working up your nerve to go get the girl. You know, like in all of those movies. And, well, you're here now, but you're a little late is all. A little late and she chose someone else."

And with those words, Aeron Michaels gave up his hopeless feelings for Kagome Higurashi, and walked away, back to his lonely, dreary, tedious life.

* * *

Sesshoumaru paced. The Mage watched.

Back and forth, his feet moved, a space of ten feet. He did not make a sound when he stepped. He was lighter than air, and could disappear, in the time it took to draw a breath, soundless, deadly, a shadow.

He stopped moving when he felt he had a reasonable amount of time to think.

Turning back to the Mage, the rueful words rose and met the black of night. "I do not have the time to worry about other enemies."

The man touched the bracelets about his wrist, lifting them upwards, dropping them, repeating the action until their was a staccato beat of metal against metal, much too pleasant a sound to accompany their dark conversation. Sesshoumaru decided he did not really want to argue with the old man about his nervous fiddling, and let the sound slip into the background of his mind.

"It would be best if you worried about them all."

Sesshoumaru conceded the point. "Allow me to rephrase my response, then. I will address each threat as I see fit. And, at the moment, the greatest one is Onigumo. And I will worry about that one, now."

Tinkering of bracelets.

"I won't argue with you, but remember my word. They will come for you, perhaps even before you defeat the demon."

"Then, as I said, I will deal with the threats as they appear." His hand fell to the sword hilt, a comforting presence in the midst of a wearying subject.

"Tell me then, why you are here."

Sesshoumaru thought for a moment about the girl sleeping in the quiet of the night, tired and brave and foolishly naïve.

"The Protector was given a vision of this place by Kaede, the wood spirit."

Glowing eyes widened in remembrance. "Kaede? She lives yet?"

"Hardly. She is trapped in the northern parts of Japan, bound to the land and a demon. Her temple was overtaken some centuries ago, and she is unable to break free of her imprisonment. The girl, Kagome Higurashi-"

"Higurashi? She doesn't look Japanese."

Sesshoumaru's lips instantly twisted into a wry, genuinely amused smile, and he shook his head. "She isn't." The smile faded inwards. "Kagome had a vision of the wood spirit and we traveled to her. Originally, I thought, perhaps, Kaede would have had some sway over the blade, but it seemed my quest has taken a detour. The kami informed the Protector that we are alighted by fate and then she was given a vision of you and this place." The Mage remained still, a silent flare of power billowing outwards from his statuesque form. "And I was told the spirit could not be released from her bindings unless someone with considerable sorcery and understanding of dark magic was to unwind the spells."

"I see." The man breathed deeply, and reached again for his bracelets. Absently, he lifted them, dropped them, lifted them, and dropped them. "I dreamed of the Protector, too. I knew she was on her way here, would come one day. I did not know when, but I felt the return of the sword and the demon, some years ago. I sent the guide you met to the village a few years ago. I have been waiting for both of you since that day I sent him down the mountain." He looked up from the trance he had fallen into, stalling his wandering touches of the jewelry at his wrists. "I will help you in whatever way I can. I will go with you and free the spirit. But," his voice fell into gentle tones, "there is another reason you are here."

"Yes. The girl-" He remembered her, pinned against the wall, choking to death, and he had to turn away from his own thoughts. "I believe she unconsciously channels power. She can rescind my rights to the blade, and has done so, once, on accident. At times, she can feel me, my pain, through her connection to the blade. And there are times-" the ghost of her fingers across the blade, drifting over his skin,"-There are times when I can sense her, vaguely, through the blade. Her anger, her emotions, even physical touch." He raised his eyes to the night, breathing deeply. "The tree at the Shikon site loaned her its power and she used it, decimated an entire cliff face. She has never used magic, has never been around it, did not even know it existed until we met. She told me, not long after we met, that she had always felt something in the world around her, as if it was not right in her eyes. But I do not claim to know all about sorcery and magical ability and I could not tell her what she was. If she was anything at all."

"You want me to try and find out what she is?"

Sesshoumaru's golden eyes appeared grey in the shadows of the dark. "Yes."

"I may not be able to. But, I will try." He looked to the sword hanging at the warlord's waist. "Was your power completely unchecked when you first received the blade?" Sesshoumaru's head descended once, curtly, disliking the admission. "And since then it has improved?"

"It has, but it is a small improvement."

"If the girl is unconsciously controlling the sword…" A thoughtful look crossed his face. "Perhaps," he ran a hand across his chin, brow furrowing in the depths of a great idea. "Perhaps," he murmured slowly, a rising jubilee transforming him as light broke into contemplative eyes. "Perhaps."

"Perhaps what?" Sesshoumaru barked, agitated.

The Mage jumped, startled from reverie. He gestured for the sword and it was relinquished with doubts. "Perhaps," he murmured, running a hand across the flat of the blade, a grin breaking out over his face. "Perhaps, my dear warlord, it is much easier to master the blade than you think." He looked up and caught sight of the barely restrained fury and hastened on, "If the girl unconsciously controls the sword, then, perhaps she also unconsciously gives back your power. You hardly knew her when you first met, she would not trust you very much. But I would hope, given the amount of time you have spent together, you may have created some sort of bond between the two of you. Perhaps," he smiled wickedly, knowingly, as if he had mastered the mysteries of the world, "you must earn the sword. Earn it from her. From the great wide all knowing something."

Sour bile rose in Sesshoumaru's stomach, and his mouth twisted, face dark. "The priestess believed the sword wanted something from me. You believe this is it?"

The Mage shrugged and handed him back his most precious weapon. "It might be. But, if you really are guided by some destiny, I could be entirely wrong. Mastering the sword may be a slow process, one tied directly in with whatever path you follow."

"That," Sesshoumaru said dryly, "is what I had hoped you would not confirm."

"Yes, well, you never did like it when others ordered you around."

An eyebrow rose in righteous indignation. "I never take orders from others, Mage."

"Precisely my point."

Sesshoumaru, by this time, had quite enough unpleasant talk of destiny and decided this would be as apt a time as any to leave and rest. He could continue being subtly furious when he awoke the next morning.

"You will meet the girl tomorrow. We will discuss this later, after you have been around her for enough time."

Puzzled, the mage turned holy man called after the retreating back of the greatest warrior he had ever known, "Enough time? Enough time for what?"

Sesshoumaru threw a casual glance over his shoulder. "You do not think she will readily put up with you prodding at her aura with your magic do you? She is infuriating and willful. It will not be an easy task finding out what she is."

"Surely it could not be so hard to define her. She either has power or she does not. Is that not so?"

A dark laugh swelled and dissipated, leaving the Mage alone on the balcony, perplexed.

* * *

Kagome rolled over, groaning in confusion.

Oh, she was so disoriented.

The very last vestiges of her dreams were certainly not helping her foggy state. She was wondering, blearily, as she strained to hear something, anything, that would alert her to precisely where she was, why she had dreamed of Aeron, sitting at his desk, gloomy and shadowed, alone, very much alone.

Her thoughts were drawn short and scattered across her brain when she heard light steps and the sound of wood against wood, a sliding door.

A powerful presence hovered near her, roving eyes examining her sleepy form.

"Are you quite awake yet, Miss Higurashi?"

Relief, followed quickly by annoyance, preceded once again by relief, welled within and she found the courage to open one eye.

Bright, warm sunshine filtered into the room, throwing mellow, quiet patterns across the floor.

Taisho stood against a far wall, in the sunlight next to the screen leading to her balcony, door propped open to allow the mountain light and crisp air into the room. Through the crack in the screen, she could see a glimpse of the snow-capped vista, silent and commanding, like the man before.

Right.

Now she remembered.

Mountains, demons, monks, being very, very cold. A sword tip, tantalizing, just brushing the front of a chest.

She glanced at Taisho again, luminous in the bright light, and it seemed as if she were still dreaming, he was so impossibly handsome and very much alive. Her heart hadn't stuttered to a stop in a few days, and had apparently deemed this moment as appropriate as any other to remind her of how he could so easily pull her off her axis, and spin her around until she was both metaphorically and physically dizzy.

He was dressed in white robes, the modern clothes shirked and forgotten. It was for the best anyway; knowing who he was and where he came from only made him seem awkward in anything but the most royal and exotic of attire. Though she had only seen him adorn traditional clothing once, it had been so befitting that when she thought about him, which, she tried not to do at all, she always pictured him in those garments, regardless of how many times she had seen him in some other equally handsome apparel.

"You know," she said conversationally, opening up her other eye and sitting up in the mat of pillows, blankets, and sheets she was tangled in, "I never fainted until I met you."

She cringed and immediately regretted speaking.

Well, hell.

The accidental subtext in that sentence made her want to burrow back under her covers and tell him to go away until she could speak without embarrassing herself.

She saw his eyes spark and a small, infinitesimal smile worm its way into the lines of his face, gentling it, in the slightest of ways.

"Of all the times you have slipped into unconsciousness, Miss Higurashi, I can say, with relative certainty, that most, if not all, were not my fault."

She sniffed airily. "The only time my unconscious state was my own fault was this last time. Upon proper examination, it's been decided that my actions on the mountain were not quite, not thoroughly thought out. I'll take the credit for that one."

He laughed and Kagome flushed and looked around the room, avoiding the intensity of his eyes.

There was nothing in this sleeping chamber but the futon on which she slept, and her mangled pack, situated in the corner of the room. The woven mats of the floor were worn, well used, had seen the effect of time. Everything was light, colorless, pale, calming, and as she glanced back at Taisho, and nearly lost him in the room. But there he stood, smiling, though to anyone else, it might have been nothing but a stoic stare, she knew, he was smiling.

"You do not think leaving the safety of the tree after I expressly told you to stay was unwise, foolish, and also your fault? I hardly forced you to leave the protection of the barrier. If you had listened to me, perhaps the foray into yet another unconscious vision would have been avoided." He took a step forward and she suddenly felt quite vulnerable beneath the warm sheets, wrapped in clothes she had definitely not been wearing when they ascended the mountains.

"Well," she stammered, pulling the crisp fabric up around her chin, "I had to do that, now didn't I? We'd have been killed… maybe, if I hadn't. And, all those other times were not my fault either. Besides, by following the orders of the tree, it lead us here… more or less."

She rolled her eyes sheepishly, feeling far too distracted to actively argue her point.

He took another few steps, boring a golden hole through emerald eyes.

"And that is why you are in bed unconscious… more or less."

"I am not unconscious," she protested with feeble assertion.

He stood above her, holding her captive with his gaze, his presence stealing her breath.

"You were."

She blinked slowly, as of in doing so, she would dispel the thrall he had weaved around her. "Was, past tense," she whispered.

She saw a flash of teeth. "But unconscious nonetheless," he murmured agreeably.

Kagome, caught up in the planes of his face, felt herself, even though sitting firmly on the floor, fall forward, lost in an unnamed void. Distantly, she felt her head nod, though, she could not accurately say what it was she was agreeing to.

What had they been talking about?

He crouched next to her, much too close for her liking, which was an odd thought, as she had been fully wrapped around his upper body for a good duration of time, and had, at that time, only felt the slightest kindling of awkward tension. Now, she thought, it was much, much, much different, and there was a reasonable amount of space between them.

"Your lips are bleeding." He pointed out, provoking her to resurface from deep musings.

She blinked, licked her lips, and slowly, as carefully as she was able, drew back from the man squatted at her side.

What he did next then killed any antagonism or objection, which might have, normally, arisen from her.

His hand moved, and in the time it took to bat a set of lashes, it was to the side of her face, halting her sluggish removal from his presence, turning her to the light, tipping her chin upwards for his eyes to wander a journey over her face.

Kagome was rendered speechless for the count of three heartbeats and then, mastering the nervous dance of her middle, she laughed.

"They do that. I have this phenomenal ability to lose every lip balm I buy. I gave up and just let them bleed. I'm fine. No serious injuries. I promise." She pulled her chin from his fingers, the tips of his claws gently grazing her skin.

His brow rose at her flippant tone, the smile still hovering around the corners of his lips, though, she could see, the darkness was returning to his gaze, a funny thing really, since his eyes were nothing short of molten sunlight.

Molten sunlight? Molten sunlight?

This, she moaned to her inner narrator, was taking a painful turn toward a badly written romance novel. And Kagome Higurashi was not a heroine in a drivel filled narrative.

Novels be damned, she snarled to herself. She was a clumsy, fully flawed human being who was simply doing what she could, and she needed to stop any flow of awkward thoughts concerning the man before her.

This declaration may have been a drastic understatement and maybe in ways she did not recognize she happened to be very brave, but she chose to underestimate, and not dwell on the whys of supposed bravery. Because, she admitted dejectedly, in the end, if she thought too much, she would revert back to the uncontrollable, scared, angry, fearful, Kagome.

She was not graceful or beautiful or heroic Kagome, she was just Kagome.

And just Kagome was still staring at Taisho, wishing, for a silent minute, that she were another Kagome. Perhaps the one in a romantic novel, perhaps the angry one, perhaps the sad and lonely Kagome in Worthington museum, but in the end, she wasn't, and that was all she was.

"You should take better care of yourself," the man before her finally mediated.

She would get right on that if only he would stop being so overbearing and perfectly attractive.

Dreamily, she heard her voice say, "You seem to be in a good mood for the mess we happened to fall into yesterday."

He chose not to answer her, and instead, pulled away and stood, still holding her attention steady. "You're clothes were…wet…there are robes for you to wear, there," he pointed to the edge of the futon, but she could not look away from his face, not yet. He held her gaze for a moment longer, and then turned and walked to the shoji screen separating her room from the open hall, pausing in the doorway.

"Take your time, if you move quickly, you will be short of breath, and," he said with a an inflection that sang of amusement, "I do not wish to argue whose fault that would be. Although clearly, it would be yours, I am sure you would debate with me unnecessarily. And I do not wish the headache on myself."

He disappeared in a blur of white and gold sunlight, closing the door gently, leaving her with the empty peace of the room.

Kagome exhaled shakily, running her hands over her scorching cheeks.

Curse it. Damn it.

She glared at the door he had slipped through.

Two steps forward, one step back.

She had actually felt like they were moving toward something resembling a friendship. Or something. She wasn't sure Taisho had many, if any, friends, and was not convinced he would be pleased at her idea of friendship. But it didn't matter anyway, because now she was back to being nervous in his presence. Sitting up she tossed off the blankets, cursing under her breath, struggling to a stand, feeling dizzy with the sudden movement, the shallow breathing.

She wrestled with the gauzy sleep wear she was swathed in, ripping them off with force, kicking the material off her futon, glaring vehemently, not wanting to think about how she came to be dressed in those clothes nor who had removed her original garments. Reaching for the robes at the edge of the futon, she brutally pulled the material over her head, hardly bothering to note where her head and arms were supposed to go, much less the beautiful green hues of the flowing garments. She was too busy wondering why she was angry, frazzled, and weak kneed.

Exhaling sharply, she pushed her tousled her out of a flushed and sweating face, holding her hands and arms before her as if to placate inner demons. When she was reasonably clam and collected, she straightened and ran hands through hair, bringing them down through the snarls to adjust the garments around her waist. Satisfied, she made her way to the door and slipped out of her room and walked right into Taisho.

"Oh!" She exclaimed, stumbling to get her balance. "I really wish you wouldn't do that!"

"You should look where you step, then," he responded. "Come."

Her eyes slid along the hallway, bright and open, the mountain air sweeping in through the open screens and doors. She breathed in deeply, closing her eyes, feeling the bright, sharp snap of the chilly breeze brush over her face. She listened, could hear the sound of footsteps, below, above, the murmur of prayer, the hum of songs, the rustle of rosaries. It was as it had been in her vision, beautiful.

Next to her, she felt Taisho grow impatient, and she opened her eyes, casting him a questioning look. He seemed to have something on his mind, was agitated, poised as if to speak, but unable to find words.

"Sorry."

"If we may?"

He led her to the end of the empty hallway. There, the screens were open, letting the light and wind filter through. She followed the man slowly, carefully, afraid to walk too fast, lest she become light headed again. They stepped out onto a balcony and she felt an involuntary hitch in her chest, her breath catching painfully.

The monastery was stunning.

She was standing on a balcony that wrapped around the entire upper floor, which, she assumed must be the guest quarters. Peering over the railing of the veranda, she saw a courtyard, far below, monks in every shade of robe, strolling and praying, speaking and singing. Her eyes brightened as she turned around, leaning her back against the wooden rail, shading her eyes against the light, taking in the details of the black roofs, the prayer flags, the flashes of color as people milled about on every level above her. Turning towards the west, she saw the direction they had come from, a gap in the mountains where the pass appeared, the rip down the core of the land, the tiny red bridge that connected the two sides of the cavity.

"This is magnificent!" She breathed, beaming.

"It is beautiful, is it not?"

She turned at the sound of the voice; thick with an accent she could not place. Behind them, a man stood, draped in midnight blue, glinting gold around his wrists. His eyes were warm, twinkling with laughing humor.

The Mage.

She gaped at him for a moment, before realizing she was being exceedingly rude. "Yes," she whispered, "it is very beautiful."

The man walked forward and stood on her right side, gazing out at the mountain and sky.

She studied him; speechless now that the subject of their search was before her, a man who had known Taisho, had lived through legend.

He stood, wrapped in his power, nestled in its protective, dusty wings. It was fantastic, almost tangible; she could almost see it, fluctuating in the space that radiated around him. It undulated, ebbing back and forth as if it was an extension of his mind, curious and probing. She could feel ancient spells dwelling, hovering around the golden bracelets around his wrists, vibrating against his skin. His aura seemed to reach out, of its own accord, and brush over her. It was examining her, studying her, burrowing in to find her secrets.

It was a heady feeling, the wash of power, and coupled with the thin mountain air, she felt the beginning sway of the unconscious world. Just as soon as the power had appeared, it faded, receding back into its master, with it went the dizzying sensations, and Kagome returned to herself, her sight brighter and clearer than it had been moments before.

Blinking through the wash of sensations and feelings she met his bemused gaze.

"You are Kagome."

She smiled faintly, "Last I checked."

Taisho coughed and she had the distinct impression he was stifling a laugh. Her own smile widened, affected by the pervasive joviality of the man.

"And you are the Mage."

The man looked to Taisho, his smile wry. "I see he has been weaving his tale for your benefit. I was 'the mage' once. I am no longer."

Kagome felt a stab of regret and embarrassment. "I'm so sorry, that was rude of me to assume…"

The man shook his head and smiled down at her. "Do not be distressed. You did not know. For now though, I suppose it is an apt an appellation as any."

Kagome suddenly realized, as she smiled politely at the sorcerer, then that both men were peering at her with varying degrees of curiosity. Nervous, her eyes flit between both men, waiting for one to speak.

"Miss Higurashi."

"Yes?"

Taisho leaned back and rested against the railing, assessing her. "We need you to do something for us." She waited, breath held. Taisho and the Mage exchanged dark glances. "I need you to meditate."

"Here?" She asked, still perplexed and agitated by their fierce perusal of her.

"No," the Mage cut in, "there is a place at the top of the monastery where we will not be disturbed."

Kagome plucked at the edges of her sleeves, fraying the ends with her blunt fingernails. "Alright. That's fine. But, why?"

Taisho frowned, but he did not appear to be displeased with her question, merely thoughtful, dark and pensive about the situation. "If you wait, we may be better able to explain afterward. There are," he caught her eyes and smiled behind his dark secrets, "many things I have yet to explain to you and I will do so, if you can wait, just awhile longer."

She nodded slowly, concerned now, by their mysterious air. "Alright," she heard herself say, voice level, even while she felt the trembling of her legs, the uneasy flutter of her middle.

The men did not seem apt to waste any time. Within a minute of her declaration, she was swept off and hurried upwards, further into the clouds. The stairs they traveled wound through the middle of the monastery, and were heavily used by all the men within the enormous dwelling.

Two floors above where she had awoken, there were permanent quarters, where the monks lived and slept. After that, there were prayer areas, meditation rooms, dojos, an entire floor for meal preparation and the space in which to house so many humble men.

Near the top of the staircase she worked up enough nerve to step away from the wall she had been hugging, and look over the side of the rail. There, far below, she could make out the bottom floor, a painted mosaic shinning back at her. The sun littered down through the middle of the enormous columned room, and her eyes trailed upward to see, melded into the roof, a giant circular window, opaque, a skylight to the infinite blue above them.

The farther up they went, the less they ran into other monks. They seemed more inclined to stay in the lower areas where the prayer rooms were abundant and the scent of incense hung heavy in the air. Kagome turned to speak to Taisho, to ask him where exactly they were going, but he wore such a calamitous expression on his face, she decided it would not be worth the temper she might accidentally prod to life.

At the top of the stairs, there was but one doorway to walk through, and so she proceeded, following the empty hallway to a set of large, wooden doors. Upon reaching them she pushed against their weight, which did nothing but make her light headed. Taisho reached above her and added his strength, easily opening the portal for their passage.

Feeling a bit foolish, she avoided his eyes and stepped through the doorway, her mouth dropping open in surprise.

They had come to stand before a huge, open, empty room, devoid of windows, doors, and walls. Instead, the roof of the area was supported by many large, red, wooden beams, each circular pillar etched with markings, vibrating with magic. One end of the room was fashioned, flush against the mountain, and perhaps, if she had tried, she might have been able to reach out over the edge of the floor and brush her fingertips across the mountain face.

Her eyes fell to a thin, narrow walkway, not more than ten feet long, connecting the door they stood before to the strange, quiet place. It was a short bridge, but it had no railings, nothing to stop an awkward placement of a foot from becoming a perilous fall to the monastery floor below.

The Mage weaved past her and walked across the walkway as if it was not suspended above the entire monastery, however many hundred feet they were from the ground level.

Kagome felt a warm hand wrap around hers, and she looked down at her fingers, surprised by the sudden touch. Her eyes flew to the man towering above her, but he was already walking across the pathway, pulling her behind him, his grasp on her hand tight and protective. He walked slowly, assuring that she stayed in the middle of the walk, until they reached the end and more stable ground whereupon he released her from the safety of his hold.

She tried to draw in a steady breath, but it was very difficult, and she was not entirely convinced it was due to the thin air.

She turned in a slow circle, taking in the enormity of the area. She felt dwarfed under the black roof, placed next to the red and gold gilded pillars. These support beams, soaring above her, were so enormous she could not have reasonably hugged her arms around them. It would have taken three of her to do so.

"Here," Taisho said diverting her attention, gesturing to the middle of the floor, his hand wavering in the air, pointing to the spot he wished her to be. On shaky limbs she made her way over to him and lowered herself to the floor, settling into a comfortable position. Instead of sitting with her, Taisho took several steps backwards and spoke quietly. "Like always, Miss Higurashi."

She held his gaze for a long moment before she closed her eyes. She heard his voice, breathed as he commanded, falling backwards into the only thing she knew, the chaotic thing that was Kagome, and then she heard the newer voice, a note of pleading in its far away echo.

"Forgive me if I hurt you."

* * *

Sesshoumaru watched as her breath fell into a deep pattern, his chest bound in painful disquiet.

She was immersed in her meditative state, far removed from the world, wandering around inside her head, inside her heart.

He watched the Mage step closer to the girl, and fought back his desperate desire to protect. This was the first time in their journey together that he was unable to interfere with her, and it was not easy to stand at a distance, especially that his inability to help was by choice. His bond with the sword, his declaration and identity as the Protector of the girl, the wielder of the blade, protested the possibility of her harm, and the blade hummed with worry, secured at his hip.

The Mage crouched and Sesshoumaru could not stand still. He moved away, kept his back to the scene, prayed that it would be painless, hoping….

He felt the holy man's powers expand and fill the entire space they stood in, stretching to the roof, pushing against the pillars, infusing with the magic therein. With a stuttering sweep the wave of magic crested over Kagome, pushed past, pushed through.

Sesshoumaru closed his eyes and clenched his hands into fists, fighting back the primal urge to preserve, fighting an internal struggle with the promise he made. He was a man of his word; he had promised he would protect her. Even while his voice of reason said she was in no real danger, the sword at his side throbbed with insistence, screamed for his feet to move. The weapon and its magic did not care that it was the Mage, one of the men who had brought it into being, did not care that ultimately, his actions would probably, most likely, he hoped, protect Kagome in the future. No, all the blade cared about was the pain that resonated through the girl the moment the Mage preformed his spell and thrust it into her soul.

She gasped painfully and slumped forward, trapped within her trance. The mage sank to his knees, straining to keep a hold on the magic.

Sesshoumaru turned around as the sorcery strained, stretching to the breaking point. Panting, the holy man placed his hands on the floor, his head bowed, the golden rings fiery with internal light.

A tiny part of Sesshoumaru, hiding underneath his tension, was amused. She was fighting the spell, rather effectively, pushing it back on the mage with an intensifying force.

Then, when he thought the air could take no more, would combust under the pressure, when he thought he could not hold back for another minute, it was all over, leaving a gasping man and a withering Protector as the aftermath.

Sesshoumaru was by the girl's side when the spell ceased, hauling her upright, tapping her on cheek, lightly, but with fierce insistence, bringing her around to the conscious world. To his side, the Mage was drawing himself toward one of the pillars, propping himself against it, gasping for breath.

He opened his eyes and smiled at Sesshoumaru, though the light had died within.

"You were right. She is very willful."

He swallowed the I-told-you-so that danced victory on his tongue. In his arm, Kagome opened her eyes, blinking in confusion.

"Is there pain?" He asked stiffly, senses running up and down her body, searching for any particular ache he might be able to heal.

"Can you fix souls? Because I think he just ripped mine in two."

The Mage laughed, wheezing, and ran a hand across his sweating face.

"I would say the same to you."

Kagome further sat up, gingerly, hissing, sucking in air through her mouth, open and panting. "Oh, good. So long as we are even I won't have to think of a creative way to demonstrate exactly how much that hurt." She laughed at herself then, wincing as she did, and Sesshoumaru could not help but smile wistfully.

"Put that girl to bed, Taisho," the monk ordered.

Kagome looked up into his face, incredulous. "Bed? I just got out of bed."

She protested wildly as he pulled her up from the floor and situated her in his arms. Sesshoumaru made his way toward the walkway, careful not to jostle the plaintive creature woefully arguing her perfect health.

"Taisho."

He looked to the mage, speaking in their native tongue, eyes closed, head tipped back, drawing in his magic.

"Do you know?"

The man shook his head. "No. I do not know what she is. Not yet. But I will. She is something, something very… she is something."

Sesshoumaru turned and walked back across the hanging pathway and disappeared back into the sanctuary to protect, to preserve, to watch over the future.

* * *

_Oh! I do think some of you will be pleased with developments! Thanks for reading!_


	23. Once Upon a Time

_Thanks for reading and reviewing, I appreciate you all!_

* * *

**Chapter 23**

Once Upon a Time

Kagome was going to be bed ridden for the rest of her life. Forever. Until the end of time.

This view was an entirely pessimistic one, she knew this, but she was not at all happy about her morbid fate, her impossibly unhappy future.

She sighed again and since she had been repeating this action with increasing fervor, was not surprised when Taisho spoke, annoyance sharpening the undertone of his words.

"It is in your best interest that you rest."

Kagome did not even bother to look at him, seated against the wall; instead, she chose to stare at the spot directly above her head, indistinguishable against all the other white areas of the ceiling. "I keep telling you, I am fine. Good, even. Perfectly rested. I don't hurt, I don't feel as if I was torn asunder by magical powers far beyond my understanding."

"Your sarcasm is not humorous."

Kagome threw her hands into the air. "Who said anything about sarcasm? I was being perfectly serious." An impatient noise reached her ears, quiet, demanding her attention. "Well, I'm not tired, so really, you are just wasting your time."

She heard him shift, the rustle of his garments nearly deafening in the quiet of the room. "It is not a matter of fatigue, it is a matter of health."

"I said I was fine."

"Miss Higurashi, you are wasting oxygen, arguing with me. You will lay there, and you will rest until I deem an acceptable time for you to move."

Kagome glowered, and settled into silence.

She was fine, really.

She hadn't been initially.

Far from it.

In the midst of her meditation, the distant roll of the magic swept over her, strange and disconcerting, at first, a nuisance, nothing more.

Then, when she decided simply to ignore it, the pain started.

Having little acquaintance with magic, she had no idea what exactly was violating her soul, but she did _not_ like it. Not to mention, it was interrupting a perfectly adequate meditative experience.

Through the caustic, astringent examination of her soul, she gathered enough of her disturbance and ire to mentally put her foot down and say to the unknown force, 'No, you may not so rudely enter this space.'

And that put an end to it. More or less.

Now, she was lying on her futon, cursing the Mage in a variety of colorful profanities, none of which were at all appropriate for her to use, especially since she was cursing a holy man. She was probably consigning herself to a deep circle of hell. Which, really, wasn't so bad, because she was reasonably certain she would be with friends, many acquaintances at the least. It would probably be a rip, roaring good time. Amidst fiery, sulfuric flames.

Fantastic.

Kagome closed her eyes.

She was, despite having her mental state brutally violated, in a pretty damn good mood. She was itching to explore the monastery. She wanted to wander, poke at things, pick up ancient objects and cradle them in curious hands.

When Kagome opened her eyes again she was thoroughly confused.

The light had slipped across the room, was orange and pink and shades of pastel warmth. She sat up, furious.

Damn it all, she had fallen asleep.

And proven Taisho correct.

Damn it.

Throwing off the sheets that had mysteriously found their way around her, she stumbled out the door of her room and paused in the hall. Lanterns were lit, red-orange circular orbs of light falling along the middle of the hallway, flickering pleasantly.

"Kagome."

She turned at the voice and smiled when she saw Ash walking toward her. He, it seemed, was not so ready to divest himself of his normal attire. Dressed in black and shrouded in shadow, he approached her, a small lopsided grin on his brazen mouth.

"Hey."

He sauntered up to her, and she raised an eyebrow at the cocky swagger. It had most certainly not been present when they had faced their enemies. "Hi. How are you feeling?"

She felt her aloof reserve gentle, and she said, gratefully, "I'm fine. How are you? You looked... unwell…after the encounter."

"I'm fine. It happens." He shrugged his shoulders and her eyes fell on the rosary around his neck. "Told you this thing got a lot of use."

"I can see that now," she replied dubiously. "What exactly-?"

Ash sighed and shoved his hands into the pockets of his pants, glancing at her from underneath his dark hair. "I can't control my power as readily as S-" He coughed, cutting himself off, "-as readily as Taisho. This rosary has binding spells attached to it. Very old and powerful binding spells. It keeps me… in control."

He jerked his head, silently asking her to walk with him. They turned and aimlessly strolled through the hall, going nowhere in particular.

"You are never without it then?"

He smiled grimly. "If I was without it… bad things would happen."

"Why are you unable to control your power?"

Ash thought for a moment, gazing at the mat beneath his feet. "I think we might have to wait to talk about that one."

"Unfortunate."

"Yeah," he laughed apologetically.

The hallway brought them to the curving central staircase and they paused, the man suddenly awkward in her presence.

"Uh, listen," he wouldn't look at her, focused, instead, on the lamplight flickering around them, "I just wanted to say thanks for being stupid and… helping me out when we were on the mountain."

Kagome stared at him, a dull insulted pain withering away in her breast. He raised his eyes, the barest hint of a smile on his young features. She shook her head and looked away, wry.

"Yeah, well, you too." They stood in each other's shadows for a few tired moments, before she found a way out of their silence. "Show me where I can get something to eat."

He smiled, genuine, and led her upwards, into the evening.

* * *

"Start here."

An armful of crumbling scrolls were thrown down on the table, wafting dust into the air, offending his senses.

Sesshoumaru leaned against the table and raised a displeased eyebrow. "And what, pray tell, do you want me to do with them?"

The Mage hurried past him, gesturing wildly. He watched as the deep blue robes slid past into darker parts of the room, and heard the fiddling of hands and the jingling of bracelets as the man shuffled through more shelves, reaching for older scrolls and books. He looked away from the shelves the man had disappeared around and glanced around the room.

It was very dim, the air flat and stale. Against the walls and lined on tables, lanterns and candles glowed, dripping wax to the floor. The windows and screens of the room had been propped open to let the evening in.

No doubt to forestall suffocation, he thought, wrinkling his nose in distaste, the dust tickling his eyes and nostrils.

Gingerly, he plucked one of the scrolls off of the table, unrolling it as little as possible, skimming over the symbols imprinted on the cracked paper.

"While I admit myself an accomplished being, I can say, for certain, I have never once possessed the ability to read hieroglyphics."

"Now is an excellent time to learn!" The voice called from a shadowy den.

"No."

The Mage reappeared, heaving a tome, nearly as large as he. Struggling, he pulled the heavy bound book upwards and dropped it on the table, scattering priceless parchment all over the floor.

"What _are_ you doing?" Sesshoumaru demanded, pulling away from the table, sidestepping the scattered papers.

"I am _trying_ to find out what your Protector is." He exclaimed in exasperation, flipping open the brittle pages of the book.

"Do you have any ideas?"

The man shrugged, trailing his finger down a column of words. "Maybe. I do not want to say for certain. I do not want _you_ to make _me_ swallow my words."

"How do you expect me to help you if I have no idea what I am looking for?"

The man raised his eyes, considering the words. "You present a very valid point, Lord of the Western Lands. You will be in my way. Go, find your sword's Protector, strengthen your bonds, meditate, learn about her. It could be imperative."

Sesshoumaru glared at the man and swept past, making sure to kick each rolled parchment out of his way. The Mage was as aggravating as ever. He dearly wished he could find a different sorcerer to complete the task at hand, one who was not so prone to being ridiculously infuriating. This, though, was not to be so, because, fate it seemed, while guiding his hand and his feet, liked to torment him unnecessarily.

Once outside of the library, he hunted down the girl, who was _not_ resting in her chambers. His mood darkened. Allowing his magic to thread outwards, he searched for her distinct aura, almost as familiar to him as his own. It was very difficult to keep his concentration and hone in on a single, small individual. Through all the magic of the place, it was a wonder he did not go insane.

Wandering upwards, he searched for her, the old fashioned way, dragging in the scents of the monastery, all of them offending his developed senses.

There, he caught a whiff of her, hanging in the air, floating downward. Mingled with… Inuyasha.

How bothersome.

He quickened his pace, brushing past the holy men who cast veiled, uncertain glances at him. He followed the curve of the stairs and the faint whiff he caught of the girl, until he found them, seated on the floor of the dinning area, hunched over a small table, food spread out between them.

By this time, he was boiling with dark anger.

When Inuyasha caught sight of his brother he immediately halted his conversation in deference of the greater Taisho, a sign of respect, a reminder of his promise, proving he was an obedient vassal.

It was good too, that he did such a thing.

Sesshoumaru had been furious with his younger brother, who had, after his heartfelt promises to obey orders, had defied them, thus, putting the Protector's life in mortal danger. Of course, Sesshoumaru had to admit later, when he was reasonably calm and not in danger of beheading his father's youngest son, he admitted that Inuyasha had not had many choices at the time, was trapped, corralled against the mountain, all of his exits blocked. And that was why Inuyasha still lived, was still a part of their quest. Though, Sesshoumaru saw no real reason to reassure his brother of this fact. It better suited him that his younger sibling remain fearful of his position in events. Better that he should fear and obey than know and be brash.

"You are not in bed," he announced, coming to stand behind Kagome's seated form. She did not look up from her bowl of rice.

"I am not, this is true."

Oh, how he wanted, just once, to teach her a lesson.

"I expressly told you to stay there until I deemed it acceptable that you be up and about."

She swiveled around to face him, waving her chopsticks in the air. "Are you a doctor?" He stared down at her and she blinked back, all big eyes and dark lashes. "No. You aren't. And anyway, I haven't eaten for at least a day and a half, you didn't expect me to starve did you?"

"There are many people who are capable of carrying food to where you were located. It was not necessary for you to move."

"_Taisho_, for god's sake, I am fine. I'd check up on the Mage though, I don't know what I did to him."

Inuyasha leaned forward, placing his elbows on the low table, curious. "What happened?"

Kagome shrugged and looked back at the table, spotting something tasty, pouncing on it. "I'm not too sure. Ask Taisho."

His brother turned thoughtful eyes upward, and Sesshoumaru, feeling much too perturbed to keep secrets, said stiffly, "He used his power to test her aura. I want him to find out what she is."

Kagome froze and a strained silence descended on the three. With painstaking slowness, she turned her face upwards and met his eyes. "What?"

"He is going to find out what you are. Did you not want to know?"

She struggled for words, eyes darting around his face, trying to read him. "I did. I do. Yes, certainly, but…"

"Then you will know soon. Finish eating and go rest."

He turned on his heel and left them, deciding it was best to sort through his own inner demons rather than take on someone else's. Listlessly, he made his way to the top of the monastery, the only place he could find breathable air, empty air, clear air.

Sitting there, he sorted through the future; deciding how it would be, if he could but decide the fate of the world, make it happen.

If only redemption were real, if only he could claim it as his own.

* * *

"I have never been so full in my life," Kagome announced, splayed on the floor, the empty bowl of rice next to her head. "Which is a lie. Ignore that, file it under gross overstatement."

Inuyasha snorted and resumed his study of the rice, absently stabbing it with his chopsticks. He was quite full himself. Full, relived, content.

He liked this place; there was excitement underneath its serenity. There was magic in the air, infused in every fiber of every tiny part of the structure. The monks moved quietly, slowly, with great care and thought. He felt at peace, almost, away from the city and in a place that was a mish mash of magic, places, times, and people.

He could look from one spot to another and see five different representations of culture, twenty different nationalities, and the number of men with magical abilities, each different from the next… it was captivating.

He was not surprised that Kagome's voice held the undertones of delight, her eyes shining with a fiery light. He had seen that curiosity and spark for life within her when they had first met, but it was not until that were in the midst of this new and fascinating place that it burst forth and manifested itself in her movements, her voice.

"Can I see your sword?" She asked suddenly, her voice drifting up from the other side of the table. His eyes darted to where she lay, obstructed from his view. He stood and walked around the low-lying surface where the remains of their food was scattered about.

She gazed up at him from the floor, her hands behind her head, a languid smile etching its way over her face.

"What?" He asked in confusion.

"Can I see your sword?" She repeated, throwing him a quizzical look.

He shrugged as her words sank in and reached, slowly, his hand straining over his shoulder, connecting with the smooth, clean surface of the hilt. With an even steadier hand, he drew he blade and brought it down over his body. Below, on the floor, Kagome drew herself upright and stared at the blade in reverent silence.

Modeled after a katana, his blade was all black and dark, shining and magnificent, the silver sheen smiling beneath the marks and wear and tear. It was not as durable as any of his older brother's weapons, but it had worn well through time and he was proud of it, it and the battles it had won, the times it had saved him.

Gingerly, he lowered the blade until the girl's fingers wrapped around the hilt, her eyes traveling its length, curious fingers examining every inch.

He took a step back, a slow burning embarrassment running through him.

To Inuyasha, his sword was an extension of himself, and it felt, as her sharp assessment scoured every inch of the wrought metal, that she were prying him open and plucking out his secrets. He didn't mind too very much though, his pride overcame his embarrassment, and he was relatively sure that she was not a sword expert and would probably be unable to accurately pin point all the flaws in his weapon.

"It's been well used," she murmured, eyebrows drawing into a contemplative frown.

Inuyasha winced and gritted his teeth together.

She was an insufferable know it all, was what she was.

"It's wonderful though," she added, hands turning it in her grip, careful not to misplace a finger, noting the sharp, winking edges.

His limbs relaxed, the retort he had built dying before it erupted and strangled the tentative peace between them.

"Does it have a name?" she asked, handing it back to him.

He sheathed it with practiced finesse. "No. I never named it."

He caught the curious light in her eyes, the study of his face. But instead of asking him more questions she stood and stretched.

"Do you know where I can find Taisho? I should probably go smooth over whatever mood I pushed him into."

Inuyasha snorted loudly through his nose, attempting to staunch the harsh laugh that she tripped from his middle. He thought for a moment, inhaled deeply and looked back down at her. "Head upwards." He pointed above them and she sighed. He could almost hear the laboring of her lungs. "Do you… want… help?"

She waved him away, already making her way out of the room, calling over her shoulder, "If I can't even walk on my own then I really have problems. No, I'll do it myself. If I collapse and fall from the heights tell your brother it wasn't your fault and that if I don't blame you for my stubbornness neither should he."

Inuyasha shook his head at her retreating form. He could not help but marvel at her. Perhaps she thought it was funny that an accidental death might be blamed on him, but her knew, knew far too well, that his brother took nothing lightly when it came to the woman he was protecting.

He shuddered slightly and moved off in his own direction, aimless, wandering, like always, but this time, in that place, with less space in between each single destination.

* * *

Kagome was seriously regretting not accepting Ash's awkward offering of help.

After two floors she was winded and wishing for an elevator. By four floors she would have given anything never to see a staircase again. She lost count after six floors and decided if she knew how many more there were, she would surely die right where she stood.

When she finally made it to the top of the monastery, she had seen no sign of her Protector and if he had seen her, he had made no move to reveal himself.

Ahead, the doors to the strange outdoor room loomed, propped open, the evening settling its indigo edges around the mountains. Too tired to push the doors open any further, she squeezed through, wiggling her hips free of the small space between the heavy wood.

When she regained her composure, she looked up and her breath caught in her throat.

Taisho stood at the farthest edge of the room, the tips of his feet hanging over the edge of the floor, his right arm casually pressed against a gigantic crimson column, weight leaning, perilously, against and over the drop.

His hair, she noted, had grown since his transformation and the rejoining of his power and now flowed below his shoulders, stands of moonlight, gossamer strings. She allowed her eyes to wander his broad shoulders, poorly concealed by the swathes of white fabric and found, once again, her surprise at his posture, his stature.

Sometimes, in rare moments, she forgot he was a warrior. It was a difficult thing to dismiss for it was so tied to who he was, but in moments where quiet, almost gentle contemplation ruled his manner, she could push that part of him away, and was reminded of a different man, the man she had run into in a museum hallway.

She was pulled from her study of him when he turned, his features catching her off guard. There were so many moments when he did that, even after the time they had spent together.

It was then that she decided she wanted to learn his secrets. And it was not for the simple pleasure of knowing what made him dark and light, but because she found, in that moment with the mountains hanging in the background, the future as unsure and unsteady as the breath in her body, that she cared.

She cared because it was impossible not to, when lives were at stake, especially when he risked _his_ life, every moment of everyday to keep her alive. She had to care. She needed to care. She wanted to know what would make a man… spirit... being... whatever he was… protect the world and an insignificant young woman, without the promise of reward.

Yes, she cared and she needed to know him.

"Miss Higurashi." She smiled slowly, hoping his mood had passed. "You should be resting, not traversing the monastery."

Or not.

"I know," she replied, taking a few tentative steps toward the bridge between he doors and the room he stood in. "But, I-"

"Stop."

He turned fully and strode across the room and over the bridge, stopping just before her, extending his hand.

She blinked at him. "I am perfectly capable of crossing a distance of ten feet by myself."

He did not smile, regarded her with ice and cool certainty. "I do not doubt your ability to walk, but, this happens to be ten feet suspended above a hundred foot drop, and even while your clumsiness may not assert itself in the span of said distance, I will take no chances. I do not know the nature of every man who lives in this monastery and I find it unacceptable for you to be killed here, of all places, walking across a narrow gap. And while on the topic of our safety, I will say that I expect you to be with either myself, Ash, or the mage at all times. Do not argue with me, I do this for your safety."

Feeling a bit affronted by his declaration, she reached out and let him take her hand.

"I wasn't going to argue with you." He laughed sharply. "I was merely going to point out what a bother that will be."

"You never seemed a liar to me, Miss Higurashi," he intoned, his voice lifting with the dying remnants of his laugher.

She scowled and let him pull her across the bridge and into the colossal room. They stood for a moment, comfortable in whatever thoughts they felt no reason to voice.

"What is this place?"

Taisho looked around, his golden gaze flickering in thought. "It is a place that channels magic. It acts as an amplifier. Powerful spells are performed here."

"Is that why the Mage had you bring me up here to meditate?"

He looked down at her, so tall above her he seemed to merge with the lengthening shadows and the towering pillars.

"Yes."

Kagome sighed.

Monosyllables.

Wonderful.

She sauntered over to him, her hands clasped behind her back, quickly formulating a plan to draw him out. As far as she had seen, she was apparently the only one capable of doing so.

"About the mage…"

"What of him?"

She meandered over to the edge of the floor, keeping a reasonable amount of distance between herself and the perilous drop. Behind her, she heard the shuffle of robes as the man moved behind her, hovering, watching her like an overprotective parent.

"How did he come to be here?"

She felt long fingers wrap around the flowing sleeves of her garments, pulling her back and away, and unbidden, a smile crept onto her lips.

"After we parted ways he traveled the world and after some time of meaningless wanderings he decided he needed to atone for past mistakes. He was not so lucky as I, to have money and power; he could not do whatever he pleased. He did not wish to shirk his magical abilities; he wished to keep them strong in the off chance that the demon reappeared in his lifetime. He found a monastery and entered it, devoting his time to prayer and atoning for his sins. Then he came here. He is believed to be, by many of the monks and Buddhist followers to be the Miroku, the Maitreya, the future Buddha."

Kagome stared at him in wonder. "You mean he's a prophesized savior?"

Taisho smiled down at her, "I said _they_ thought so. It does not make it true. He scoffs at such talk."

"Why would they believe such things if he denies it?"

The man leaned against one of the pillars, his shadow long against the descending sun. "He is, was, very powerful. He has lived far beyond the capacity of a normal human, and he is a shinning example of redemption and peace. Why would he not be the perfect model for salvation?"

"Because if he isn't who they think, he isn't the perfect model."

The man shrugged. "Miss Higurashi, people will believe what they want, and often times there is no possible way to dissuade them. This is human nature, and I see no reason why holy people would be exempt from this."

"Are spirits and demons and otherworldly beings the exception?"

He stood straighter and smiled, the corners of his mouth turning upward in hidden amusement. "Of course not. We find other causes to divert ourselves with."

"Taking over the world is now a pastime?"

He fingered the sword at his waist; thumb moving to the hilt, popping the sword out of its secure hold, allowing it to slide back down the metal sheath, a soft grating of metal against metal penetrated the low whistle of the wind, and Kagome felt the pull of the weapon, her eyes moving to the slow, absent movement of the warrior's hand.

"Not so much a pastime as a diversion," he answered, his dry humor sparking the air.

Kagome snickered. "What do _you_ do to divert yourself, besides _saving_ the world?"

His smile faded, a thoughtful expression passing over his face, his eyes going far and distant, recalling and remembering. "There is little in this world that can pull me away from the task at hand."

Kagome looked down at her garments, her hands busying themselves with the descending waterfall of green. "You wouldn't happen to find rare, old objects diverting would you? Because I think your billionaire, treasure collecting ways might be more than a front. I think that a man such as yourself, old and powerful, would see the beauty in rare, fragile objects, artifacts that connected him to the past, where he came from." She looked up from her tentative spot below his scrutiny; afraid she might have trespassed on his privacy, pried where she shouldn't have.

He merely watched her, face impassive, eyes veiled. "Perhaps," he finally answered, his voice long and drawn out, quiet and reverent, as if he had uncovered a vital piece of information. He drew in a sharp breath and the doors closed, the whisper thin opening into the man inside locked down and cast away. "Are you well enough to meditate?"

"Yes," she responded, her voice hoarse, desolate, the loss of the moment hitting her just below the heart.

She could not blame him much really, she hid things from the world as well, thoughts, memories, loss. It was easier to cover it, bat it down, seal it tight and let it stew, than it was to be honest and forthright. It was much too hard that way. The wounds stung too much, had the potential to stay open for an entire lifetime.

She could not live like that. Everything that churned inside was too dark and angry, was too much, too powerful to be let go. It dragged her down, weighted her world, but it was the last remnant of life before, life the way it should have been. That it was tinged, overshadowed by grief, did not seem to matter anymore. The good and the bad had molded so fully that she knew she would have to let it all go, and that was something she could not do.

Not yet, and perhaps never.

So, she sank to the floor and followed the man into the inside, where there shouldn't have been peace, or serenity, or calm tranquility. But it was there, and it was untangling itself, slowly, carefully, mindful of the good and the bad, the light and the dark.

* * *

The next day, quite by accident, Kagome found the bathing rooms.

It was quite embarrassing really, walking into the steamy area, seeing the giant tub… and a reclining monk.

Mortifying to be exact.

But, without the use of the language, whichever one he spoke, she extricated herself from the situation, managed to become clean, and found herself, once again, wandering the halls of the monastery.

Taisho and Ash had not been in their rooms when she awoke, and so she decided it was not _her_ fault if no one was around to keep an eye on her. This decision to wander aimlessly without one of the men by her side was probably going to blow up in her face, in the form of a very angry, handsome, silver haired Protector, but, really, she could not bring herself to care much, too enthralled with the sights around her.

She was slowly becoming accustomed to the winding hallways and twisting staircases of the monastery. She still managed to walk in circles, squares, and other geometric shapes, always ending back where she started. But, despite momentary lapses in her generally good sense of direction, certain area's of the sprawling monastery seemed to find their way to her.

Magic hung heavy in the air, like the dust drifting in the light filled passageways. Sometimes, when she paused to catch her breath and the mingling of crisp, cutting air, incense, and heavy saturated scents wafted around her, she thought she could actually see the sorcery, could almost catch glimpse of it before her hand moved, grasped at the fleeting nothingness, passing through thin air.

She would wait, holding her hand before her, staring at her fingers as if she had never seen them before, wishing, wanting, hoping that she had touched something tangible.

In that place of magic and mystery, she was hovering on the edge of a cliff, a figurative ledge, one much less dangerous but equally frightening to the trail she had wandered to make it to the place she stood.

Her fingers twitched, slowly closing against one another, the smooth skin of the tips of her fingers brushing against one another, with nothing in between. She wanted to see things, see the good kind of power, wanted it explained, wanted it to fall into her opened, upturned, awaiting hands.

She had seen evil, had felt it clawing at her throat. She had seen good, or the nearest thing to it, in the man who swore to protect her. But she wanted the good to be real, touchable, wanted to see it inside herself, wanted the Mage to open her up, spill her before herself, and proclaim that goodness and purity were real and that they would win, would defeat the demon, would live happily ever after as no one else had. Irrational hope and rational understanding were thick in her mind where she wanted righteousness and clarity to nestle.

She dropped her hand and stared at a shadowy place where things should have been happening, something to prove that she was a part of fate, that she had a purpose, and was not being dragged up a mountain to fail miserably at protecting an object she had no means of defending.

And that was how the Mage found her, enraptured with an empty space of air, lost in thoughts, eyes distant and far away, mind cast so far inside she might as well have been in the middle of meditation.

She was so lost that she did not immediately feel the light press of fingers on her shoulder, gently pulling her out of reverie. The grip became more insistent and she whirled around, brought back to the present.

Kagome looked upwards and into the dark depths of amused eyes, the laughing lines, the glitter of mirth. Against the erratic pounding of her startled heart she found enough good humor to smile back at the strange man before her.

"Miss Higurashi?"

She blinked up at him and looked back toward the empty air and wafting dust, tinged golden in the filtering sunlight.

"Sorry, yes?"

The man removed his hand form her shoulder and stepped back, mindful of her personal space. "What were you doing?"

She shrugged, forlorn. "Nothing. Thinking. Nothing really."

"You were very concentrated on this nothing."

She met his eyes. "Yes, I was."

"Would you care to walk with me?" He asked, artfully guiding the conversation away from her unease.

She reached out and took the offered arm, feeling the smooth, fine fabric of his robes, allowing her fingers to rest gently against him.

They walked out into the sunlight, quiet, enjoying the way the monastery soared above them, the low rumble of activity everywhere at once.

"You are unwell from my sorcery?"

She looked sidelong at the man, catching the uncertain hesitancy in his eyes and on his words.

"No, although I am a little perturbed that I hardly know you and you have already caused me a fair amount of pain. A little warning would suffice next time you wish to use your magic on me. You and Taisho seem to be well assured of your right to do whatever you please, whenever you please. It seems to me that I may have to school you in the art of polite inquisition. Not all people are so happy to be manipulated and as I have told my Protector before, I am at the forefront of said stubborn people. Mage, I fully understand that you are helping us, but common courtesy never goes unnoticed. Do not make me teach you a lesson."

She sighed, and the hard glint left her eye, "But, despite your… forceful… interruption of my soul, I am far recovered from that. I am… I am prone to deep thinking. That is my problem. It's not always for my benefit." She chortled softly and shook her head, "Not always good for my demeanor. Thinking sometimes gets me into trouble, with myself and," she thought of Taisho, the way he scowled when she spoke out of turn, the way she surprised him with her frank audacity, "with others. Mostly with others, but on occasion, my deep seeded musings do more damage to myself."

"Self contemplation is hardly ever a negative, Miss Higurashi," the man murmured, nodding to several monks who passed them by.

She stopped walking and turned to face him, squinting against the sun. "If you will forgive me for arguing, it can most certainly be a negative."

He raised a white eyebrow, examining her face with curiosity. "Do explain."

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair, staring off into the distance, gathering her words. "Inner demons and such," she finally muttered, brilliant eyes narrowing as she saw the memories tumble inside her head.

The man shifted and her attention was drawn to the magical, golden bracelets about his wrists. "That, then, is not self examination. That," his voice was quiet and thick with hidden wisdom and understanding, "is an inability to forgive one's self. There is no harm in acknowledging flaws, Miss Higurashi, but there is harm in _blaming_ oneself for flaws and mistakes. Shortcomings make us stronger when we realize what they are. Blame, regret, anger-" her eyes flit to his, and there, she saw time stretch backwards, saw his hands when they were younger, busier, when they were used for death and destruction, saw the battles and the loss, saw his regret, fuzzy, hazy in her mind, and understood that _he_ saw what _she_ struggled with, responsibility and duty- " are the negatives. We are all flawed. Even the seemingly perfect of us."

Kagome's was about to respond to the man when her eyes were inexplicably drawn upwards to a balcony hovering above them, jutting in the wind and air. Standing at its edge, tall, strong, and purposeful, was her Protector. He faced the sun, but there were shadows around him, intangible, dark, heavy, a stark contrast to his pale, smooth exterior. She felt an ache in her heart flare and intensify, as she remembered her world before, before magic and duty and power.

Taisho turned, and though she could not see his eyes at the distance she stood below him, she knew he looked upon her, quietly contemplating. Maybe he was wondering what her shadows were; falling around her like wings of some ancient beast, tingeing her life with their grey truth. She held her gaze steady, watching as the sun drifted off of his head, refracting the light, his hair dancing around his face and shoulders.

"I know, I know we are all flawed," she whispered, "but it doesn't stop me from keeping hold, fastening and prying into it those imperfections, every minute of every day. I know," she said again, voice a tremor in the wind, "I know that the difference between understanding and blame. I think he does, too, but we condemn anyway." The holy man was silent, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him look upwards to where her eyes were directed.

She took a deep breath, summoning courage to broach the past. "He told me the legend, about all four of you, his companions. He told me," her voice failed her, and she blinked hastily, eyes still trained on the man far above, "he told me the warlord loved the girl, the protector. Is it true?"

The Mage moved to stand beside her. "I would not know if it was the truth or a tale he, or someone, somewhere, weaved," he responded, reverent of the past and the players within it. "He is not a man to reveal. And, anymore, the past does not matter. The past is nothing but a story, anyway. It becomes nothing but a tale when you live as long as we. One forgets, purposefully locks away the memories and recalls only what is needed to survive."

She exhaled shakily. "He seems like two different men sometimes."

"And he is… sometimes. He is the man from the legend, he is the warlord, he is the man who wielded swords and commanded armies, a being who won by war and blood, a power that would stop at nothing, would yield to no one. And he is the man you see before you, on the edge of a balcony, a breed of man and beast lost, wandering the world to fulfill his duty, changed because even one so great as he cannot fight the entire earth. He is what he is, Miss Higurashi, and he will never be anything but."

"I know. But, I can't help to wonder what exactly that is."

She heard the man fiddle with his bracelets and felt the air change as they tinkered against each other, a small crackle of power sparking outwards each time the metal clashed.

"Perhaps you already know?"

She shook her head and watched as the man stood straighter, shifting his weight as he turned fully to look down on her. "No," she answered honestly, without fear or sadness, "no, I don't know him. But, I would like to."

"Then," he said slowly, sadly, "you would be the first."

She smiled at this, knowing if she could worm her way inside the man, the being, he would never let her go, would never let her return to the world she had once known. She heard the Mage draw a long, tired, breath of air, colored with time and age. "You find it sad that he lost her?"

Kagome watched Taisho slowly disengage from the balcony railing, holding her steady with eyes she could not see to meet. Slowly, with great care, he stepped away, each backward footfall taking him farther from her sight.

"We all lose things. We lose those we care about, those that we love. The world is cruel. But, underneath all of his superiority and perfect assuredness, he is a good honorable man… being… thing." She laughed lightly, wondering why her eyes hurt, why she felt the beginnings of tears creeping behind and underneath her lashes. "I just want someone to win."

"You think if he had her he would have been victorious?"

Taisho disappeared from her view, but she remained frozen, staring at the space he had stood in. "In a way," she replied.

The wind blew around them, whipping the colored prayer flags fashioned on the rooftops flapping toward the sky, sending her hair dancing about her, tickling her face, impeding her vision, but still she stood, bound by confusing, twisted revelation.

The Mage left her then, drawing away in silence, and so she stood, desperation and peaceful acceptance battling for her soul.

* * *

Sesshoumaru drew his sword and held it aloft, his feet slipping forward, his weight resting on the balls of his feet. His heart slowed, aligning itself with his deep, even, measured breaths. He blinked, eyelashes curling gently against the smooth skin of his cheekbone. A strand of hair fell out of the makeshift tie binding back his hair, and it fluttered next to his face, the white sunlight refracting off of its strange luminescence. His lips pulled upwards, a gleaming fang slipping out to greet the world, a hidden sneer, reflecting in his eyes.

He waited; watching the muscles underneath skin and robes, pull back, taut. He could already see the steps, the movement of feet, the way the black sword dipped and turned, cut through the air. He could see where the attack was meant to fall, where it was meant to glide through flesh and bone. The hand on the black scabbard tightened, the wrought metal extending forward, feet, one step, two. The silence fell and all he could hear was the rhythmic fall of the footsteps, padding across the floor, like thunder in his ears.

The sword slid toward his chest and Sesshoumaru moved, smoothly, fluidly, stepping to the side, his eyes following the course of the blade as it passed by the spot his chest had been. His white clothing flowed around him, whipping upward, caught on a draft that blew through the dojo. His hand reached out through the flurry of movement and grasped the hilt of the sword, deftly wrenching it from his attacker's grip.

He twisted his wrist, brought the sword over his arm, and without turning, without moving from his position, held the sword at the back of his fallen attacker, sprawled on the floor.

"Inuyasha," he droned casually, pressing the tip of the sword between his younger brother's shoulder blades, "Next time you decide to challenge me, remember that I am not a sensei, that I am not your instructor, that I do not follow the steps of swordplay as if they were part of a dance. This is survival not an etiquette lesson."

He stepped away from his brother and dropped the sword to the floor, the sharp point burying into the mat, the blade rocking back and forth as it stood vertical to the floor.

Inuyasha looked up from behind his mass of dark black hair, his face lined with the pattern of the floor.

"I didn't challenge you! I just wanted to spar!"

"I do not spar. I fight and I win."

Inuyasha rolled over and sat up, wrenching his blade from the floor, frowning furiously. "Well, how am I supposed to improve unless I do? I have to fight those who are better than me, and that would be you. You _are_ the greatest warrior in Japan. I don't want to admit it," he growled angrily, sheathing the sword, staring up at his older brother, "but, it's the truth, and given the enemies we have and will encounter I thought sparring with you would be a good idea."

Sesshoumaru smirked and folded his arms over his broad chest, eyeing his brother over his shoulder.

"I suggest you improve before you _spar_ with me again."

The younger man rose to his feet, grimacing, hunching slightly as a dull pain laced through the nerves between his shoulder blades.

"Suggestions please," he snapped, arching his back and gritting his teeth.

Sesshoumaru stared off into the distance, lost in thought. "How did you learn? Practice. And while you are at it, practice patience."

"I had someone to teach me… someone to spar with."

"Then find someone to teach you if you are having such difficulty keeping your sword aloft," he said shortly, tolerance running short. "It does not matter how you go about learning and improving your skills, which, I may point out, are severely lacking, it only matter that you accomplish the goal. Now you know what to expect next time you want to _spar_ with me."

Inuyasha glared at his brothers back. "I was asking for your help, I thought it might be instrumental."

Sesshoumaru shrugged off the vague desire to forcefully silence him. "I am giving you my advice. Is that not a form of help?" He held his brother's contempt gaze as he sauntered out of the dojo, passing several monks who bowed respectfully as he passed.

He felt a smirk tug at his lips when he heard a muffled yell of frustration echo out from Inuyasha, reverberating down the hallway he walked.

Good.

It would not do to have a Taisho with sub par skills.

His younger brother had never possessed the natural ability with the sword that he, Sesshoumaru, had. He was too hotheaded, far too prone to emotion rather than instinct. He had a horrible habit of losing form in the middle of a battle. If falling flat on his face in front of his exceptional older brother did not prod him into training, training _correctly_, Sesshoumaru was not sure what would.

He sighed, wondering why he seemed destined to be a caretaker to his younger sibling rather than a brother in arms.

Sesshoumaru made his way out to an empty balcony, placed high above the monastery floor, situated above the roofs and walkways, large and unobtrusive, off on its own, secluded, nestled amongst the jutting archways and pillars, concealed.

His feet made no noise as he passed over the floor way, the tatami mat giving way to the marble floor of the balcony. He walked to the edge, his large hands slipping around the smooth, red wood of the rail.

He stood for a time, leaning against the barrier, backlight by the blue sky, the gentle caresses of the breeze ruffling his hair. He reached behind him and pulled the tie away from his silvery locks, allowing them to flow against the wind, enjoying the strange freedom of such an action.

He had not been standing in that spot for long when he felt the sweep of familiar eyes. Looking down, his superior eyesight tunneled toward the figures far below.

Standing on a walkway, small and insignificant, was Kagome. He shifted, wondering at the look on her face, the emotions that surfaced and then skittered away as if she had never once possessed them.

She stared upwards at him, her mouth moving as she spoke to the monk. If he had felt like it, he could have strained, and perhaps, if the wind had died down, been able to catch her words.

Instead, he chose to watch her watching him, and imagine what she could have been saying, with all those pretty little thoughts making their mark on her young, upturned face. He slid over her features, each strand of long, dark, wavy hair, each line of her worried forehead, the dark knot of her eyebrows, drawn taut with whatever words she spoke, the subdued shine of her eyes, the long, proud line of her nose, the dip of skin above her frowning lips, to the strong, stubborn jut of her jaw. He traced each line with a curious caress of his eyes, wondering still, what she could find so fascinating in his face, a face that should have been blurry to her, so far below. If she could see him, she did not mind his stare, did not care, and did not move away.

He turned, angling himself toward her, drawing upright, compelled to move away, wanting to know if she would follow, wondering if whatever she saw in his face would make her seek him out, would inspire trust, would _mean_ she trusted him.

He stepped backwards, with little need to rush, with no desire to be anywhere but where he was. And finally, when his lazy steps had pulled him out of her sights, he turned and walked upward to meet the night.

* * *

Kagome waited, unsure, until the sun began to set on yet another day in the monastery. Then, when golden light stretched across the great expanse of the sky, lighted off the tops of the mountains, and lulled the clouds into their pastel wash of colors, she made her way to him, knowing exactly where to find him, the one place that brimmed with power and quiet, so like the man he was.

She reached the double doors, left ajar. Glancing at the space, large enough for her to fit through, she wondered if he had left them open by way of invitation.

Slipping through the opening she was once again at the head of the skinny walkway across from the enormous pillared room. She sought out the man amongst the reds of the circular beams, looking for his luminous shape amongst the grey of the shadows.

She could not see him, but she _felt_ him. He was near; he was familiar, now a fixture in her life, something that was needed, and even at time, wanted, inexplicably tied to her.

Against the darkening sky, there, above the rooftop of the strange, powerful, pillars, he sat, staring into the west, watching the sun descend behind the mountains. When she fixed her eyes on him, preserved against the night, and ensnared beneath the day, he turned and looked at her.

She hovered, wondering how angry he would be if she crossed the walkway without his permission or his assistance.

She frowned then, as she wavered, angry. She was perfectly capable of stepping across a bridge without his assistance.

She took one step forward and gasped when he appeared, standing directly in front of her.

"What did I tell you, Miss Higurashi?"

She cast him a withering, waning glare. "I remember perfectly well what you said, and I still stand by my belief that your declaration is ridiculously unfounded. I can and will walk where I please, because like it or not, you may not always be there to hold my hand. If you become worried about the span of ten feet when there is no immediate threat, how will you ever protect me or, more importantly, yourself, in the midst of a battle? You are going to have to trust me when I say I can handle something, especially if it is walking. I may be a klutz, but I have been walking for approximately 20 years. If I stopped doing _that_ on my own, I might genetically revert backwards and become completely useless to you."

Taisho stared down at her, the muscles in his jaw working as he swallowed his words and retorts. She waited patiently until he backed his way across the bride to stand on the threshold of the other side.

A triumphant smile touched her lips and she walked toward him, careful, focusing her eyes on anything but the drop below. When she reached him she held out her arms to her sides, her fingers splayed.

Taisho's eyebrow raised and her smile widened.

"Ta-da! Look at me, your little Protector, all grown up and walking across a railingless bridge."

He sneered elegantly at her, his eyes darkening at the sarcasm steeped in her voice. His hand snaked forward to grab hers, and without warning, he bent at the knees and launched himself upwards, pulling Kagome with him.

A strangled cry of surprise sounded out from between her parted lips as the cool evening air rushed past them. Her hand clutched at his and her arm strained in its socket against the pull of his strength.

And then they were on solid ground; situated on the roof he had sat as watched the sunset.

She slipped against the black tiles of the roof, clutching the man's hand more readily. Kagome could almost feel his smirk, radiating off of his face like heat, looming above her, watching her intently.

When he as sure she had her balance, when they stood steadily on the small, flat apex of the roof, he descended easily, his long legs folding beneath him, pulling her down to sit next to him, before releasing her clammy hand.

Kagome cleared her throat and busied herself with arranging the clothes around her shaking knees. It was not often she was hauled off her feet and thrown unceremoniously about the air. Although, when she was, it was always by the man sitting by her side, and by all rights she had no reason to be surprised by his actions.

She couldn't seem to convince her knees of this though, as they were still shaking, and her heart wasn't helping much either, beating erratically enough to spark her indignation.

Damn it.

How _did_ he do it?

She stilled her nervous movement and chanced a sideways glance at the man to her right.

He was leaning back on his hands, his head tipped toward the appearing stars, profile shinning with the last traces of daylight.

She blinked away the vision before her, and saw him instead as he once was, clear and crisp in her mind's eye, standing against his land, his army, his legacy, his swords at his hip, the country and the world before him, dark and uncertain, angry and ravenous.

His armor glinted with possibility, his shoulders were proud and his head high, he would never cower, he would never lose a battle, he would live forever, and one day, one day, he would sit where he was, on a roof in Tibet, with history behind him and the future before him.

Kagome smiled and drew her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around them and leaning her chest down to rest on the curve of her kneecaps.

"I find it terribly poetic that you are sitting on the roof of the roof of the world."

She felt his eyes move to her, and she looked at him from underneath lowered lashes.

He drew in a long breath and she heard a laugh echoing somewhere in his chest. "You are prone to such whimsical musings, I think, Miss Higurashi."

"Sometimes," she admitted easily.

He shifted, his long legs stretching over the gentle slope of the roof. "Always," he answered back, assured. "You hide it well behind your sarcasm and level head, but it is there, and you want to believe it, and so you do, but," he paused, ironic, "only sometimes." She looked at him then, exposed before his eyes.

It was as if he had artfully, offhandedly, reached into her and plucked out her soul, turning it upside down to shake free all its contents.

He had not spoken so frankly about her character since the day he had persuaded her to join his quest. It was a blaring reminder that behind his stoicism, behind his careless dark grace, he was not ignoring the world, merely watching with calculated and detached interest. And sometimes, when everything was suited to him, he spoke as he saw, and revealed truth so real that it hurt, that is was raw, that it stripped her down and built her back up again.

"Sometimes you speak of it, but always you think it," he finished slowly, as if he had known this about her always, had known _her_ always.

"Yes," she answered shakily.

"Why do you not let yourself be that way, if it is the way you really are?"

She thought for a moment, and her eyes drifted upward to the stars, finding the first few easily, blinking down at her. She chewed on her lower lip, brow furrowed against his words.

"Because," she started, cutting herself off when she heard the weak, throaty waver of her voice.

He turned his face toward her, waiting.

She tried again, "Because, because, because."

"Because why?"

She laughed hoarsely, his question reminding her of a small child's endless curiosity, a child who wanted to know the why's of everything, without understanding the ways of the world.

But Taisho _did_ understand. And that was the difference between innocence and regret.

"Because, it's easier to be whimsical when you won't be easily disappointed. I could be optimistic and fanciful all the time, but… that's not the way things are. Hope isn't a bad thing, neither is optimism, but… it's a quick way to disappointment and hurt."

"And how did you come to this conclusion? How were you hurt, Kagome?"

Her head and eyes snapped around, searching for his golden gaze in the descending dark. She studied him carefully, looking for a hint that he did not want to know, that she should find a way off the roof, a way to get away and avoid the past for a while longer.

Just a little while.

She knew that the past and its memories were never far behind her, nipping at her heels, reaching out for her when she least expected it. It would always be there, right behind her.

But, oh, if she could stop it from speaking through her, from asserting itself in the present.

His eyes held true, his face blank, contemplative, and she knew that there was no time such as then, to speak of the past and open up about everything that had brought her to sit next to him.

It was safe there, above the world, and somehow, she knew that he would understand better than anyone else.

"It's a very long story."

He blinked and she saw the minute curve of his lips, his head turn back to the abyss above them, to watch the colors merge and grow and fall into black.

"I am unoccupied at the moment."

Kagome laid her cheek on her knee and watched him, giving her lungs time to slow, her mind time to calm, and her heart a chance to brace itself before she broke it open again, and let the sorrow spill out.

She closed her eyes and spoke slowly, haltingly, "Once upon a time…"


	24. Vajra

_Hey all, just a few words before you read: One, thank you to all who have been reading. My readership on this story, or, at least the amount of hits have gone up in the past week which is great! So, thank you for reading! And reviewers! Do I ever adore you. You make my day BETTER. Thank you. Two, as always, author notes can be found at my profile pages, they change about every week, sometimes more. Three, this directly affects you, dear reader. I will be going on a week vacation starting on sunday, and will not be back for a week. I do not know if I will have internet access during this time, therefore, I cannot promise updates between 6/10 and 6/16. Apologies. I will be on a ranch somewhere far from my home. Also, let it be known that if I never update this story again, it is because I was thrown from a horse, fell down a trail, or drowned while river rafting. In any case, I will update as soon as possible, but do not panic if it is over a week. That simply means that I am writing and not updating and will put up the next chapter as soon as I am home with internet access. Ok, go read. (This is my favorite chapter yet!)_

* * *

**Chapter 24**

**Vajra**

"There was a kind and gentle woman, who loved all things beautiful, all things unbeautiful, too. She was good, she was calm, she was quiet, she was infinitely patient. She loved color; she adored creating things with her hands. She wanted to be a painter, an architect, she wanted to make things with her creativity, wanted to make the world more beautiful with her talent.

She went off to school to paint dreams onto canvas and somewhere in between the acrylics and the clay and the horsehair brushes she fell in love. And with her first love she had a little girl with dark hair and green eyes and an uncontrollable desire to know everything.

And not long after there were three, there were only two, because the painter's first love left. So there were just the two, Kagome and the painter, her good, kind, loving mother."

There was a broken sigh, curling up to meet the silent night.

"I never asked much about him, my father. I supposed my curiosity was off set by my stepfather. He _was_ my father. My mom met him when I was about three. I don't really remember life before he was there. He's even in my memories that were just of my mom and I; it was like he was always there, like my real father never existed.

But he did, I know he did, I could see it in my mom's eyes, when she painted. He was always first, always the one she thought about when her busy life found a moment to breathe.

My stepfather was half Japanese; he lived in Japan for most of his life. That's where my mom met him. She went there for an art show and there he was, an artist, a son of her favorite country, loving, interesting… everything. So he came into our lives and we lived together in relative bliss. They made art and I asked questions and everything was good.

We moved to Japan when I was 13. They opened up an art gallery in Tokyo. My stepfather took care of his ailing mother and my ailing mother. She was never strong, always sick with something.

When I was little I used to think she was too gentle to fight back against colds and cuts and anything that might harm her. In a way, it was true. She wasn't weak… she was just… she just wasn't strong enough. She never possessed an edge, she was never sharp, or jagged.

Not like me.

I remember she would come down sick with pneumonia at least once a year. Pneumonia and every other cold and sickness you can think of.

That's when Ajax arrived.

My step dad bought him for her. I came home from school one day and there he was, sitting on her feet while she painted. I named him, I took care of him, but he was always my mother's dog. He _knew_ she needed him, and he was always by her side. After he started sitting on everyone's feet and following her around, she didn't fall ill so often. He made life a little brighter, a little different, and he helped her in a way that both my step dad and I could not.

For about three years, life was good. It was full of color, and sunlight, and spilled paint and clay. The art gallery did all right. By no means were we well off. And mom was better. My step dad was always fine, calm and collected, nothing ever fazed him. I was all over the place, full of bright ambition and a mind to conquer all.

That all changed though, one ordinary day near the end of my senior summer.

My step dad was on his way back from delivering one of his pieces when he was in a car accident.

He died at the scene.

He past away, and we were alone again. My mom sold the gallery and we moved back to the states, away from memory and pain and back into numbing reality.

She caught a cold that winter. I think I knew even then that she wasn't going to make it. She loved him too much.

Both of them.

It turned into pneumonia like it had so many other times. She was sick all winter into spring. It was stronger than she was this time though. It wasn't that she didn't fight. No, she fought every day. But, my step dad wasn't there to hold her hand, and Ajax couldn't sit on her feet. She was stuck alone in a hospital, and I went to school everyday for seven hours, and she was alone.

She passed away on the first day of summer.

She just stopped breathing.

They thought she might make it. She was very sick, but she tried so _hard_. And she kept her humor and her wit and her grace the whole way through.

But… she just stopped breathing.

She couldn't do it anymore.

_Damn it_, she tried so hard.

But she was gone, and I was left with Ajax.

He's the last piece of my mom that I have. Do you know, he sat by the front door of my apartment for an entire month before he realized she wasn't coming back?"

Unshed, invisible tears traveled down young skin, the scent of the night mingling with their sorrow.

"She was very strong. She was graceful, and sweet, and courageous. She knew how to handle everything. She would look at a problem and sit in silence, no matter how dire the situation, and I could hear her mind working, working out how to fix everything.

I think sometimes I mistake anger for strength. No, I know I do. I didn't… I don't know how to be strong without being angry. It's as if I were to let it go, if I were to admit that they are gone and accept it as it is, then I wouldn't have anything left. That's silly, I know, but that's the way it is.

I can't survive or get by unless I bring up all that I can't let go of.

That was the only way I got through everything you told me. Moreover, that's why I was so horrible to you. I don't think I even realized it at the time. It's like second nature. It _is_ my nature. It's always there, this whole empty piece of my life and I never let it go because I didn't know how."

She sighed. "And that is why I have yet to go attend graduate school, why I have no one to help me, and why my dog is so important to me." She gave a watery laugh. "I haven't talked about this with anyone since they passed. And look where it led me! To sit on a monastery roof when I should be in therapy."

She raised her arm to wipe away nonexistent, traitorous tears that would never fall from her eyes.

Sesshoumaru watched her, inhaling slowly, as if to do so would draw in her story and her history and make it one with his.

His claws flexed against the rooftop, clicking distantly in his ears.

He exhaled, expelling her sorrow only to gather it back in as he drew another, deeper breath.

"Strength," he said, his deep voice as dark and dangerous as the night, "is not linear. It cannot be easily defined. You cannot capture it, cannot put it into a box and store it away for a later use. Strength is not defined by the person who uses it, but by the way in which it is used. Your mother's strength is not yours. You are not the same person, and therefore, cannot expect your resilience to take the same form as hers.

Burying your anger is counterproductive. It does not fuel you, or make you stronger. It will only gnaw at you, remind you of your sorrows, of your troubles, your mistakes, your inadequacies. Eventually, it finds its own way out, and that, _that_," he emphasized, turning to look at her tear streaked face, "is when you fail."

"Your anger is understandable, it is human nature to question that which you do not understand. Life is not fair, and you demand to know why. But, _your_ shortcomings are nothing when compared to others. You," he smiled behind his serious tone, "had a temper tantrum." Her eyes flashed and his lips parted further, fangs bared to the rising moon. "But," he added slowly, "given the circumstances, I believe you are allowed one. Not many would have shouldered such a great task and stayed true to it with such danger present. Your anger, what you think gives you strength, may have surfaced in an unorthodox and perhaps, immature way, but it was not entirely unexpected, and it does not mar your character.

And to think that ire is the only reason you have survived, the only way you made it through our journey, does little justice to the fortitude you _do_ possess. Do not belittle or do yourself the disservice of supposing that you are not strong, or that you are only assertive because you cannot let go of the past. If that were true, you would not be here. You would still be in that museum. You would have shrugged off duty and responsibility in favor of self pity."

He looked back up at the stars. "Do you recall that first day I met you? When I told you that had I not known better, I would think you a warrior?"

She laughed through the emotion in her throat, "Yes, I remember."

"It is not untrue," he offered absently.

Kagome's breath caught painfully in her chest and looked at him with sharp, watery eyes. "Oh," she exhaled shakily. She turned away, tucking her hair behind her ears, pulling its length off of her neck. "Thanks, I'm glad you don't consider me a complete failure even when I have no idea what I am doing."

Sesshoumaru snorted. "You are not a failure. You are…" he glanced at her, sitting underneath the stars, huddled into herself, open and raw. "Odd," he finished, amused, unable to put what he saw in her into the correct words. "But nowhere does this imply an inability to complete this quest."

"Right," she agreed through her fractured composure.

They sat for time uncounted, silent, comfortable now, more relaxed than before, mulling over all she had said, separate in their musings.

Sesshoumaru plucked her words out of his mind and burrowed them down into his soul, carefully constructing them around the image that was her, placing them with great caution, into the places they belonged. When he finished separating, dissecting, thinking, he stepped back and held her image before his inner eye and took in the slow attachment of pieces and parts, watching as each thread together to make a whole.

He counted the stars above him, infinite and bright, and his mind hovered around the girl next to him, long, wistful, invisible fingers prying at her heart, attempting to prod her into speech again, to let him in once more.

Or perhaps, he thought distantly, trailing his eyes upwards into the heavens, he was searching for something in himself, searching for it in her.

He could not bring himself to turn inward at that moment, and attribute his words of strength, could not apply them to himself. He had already let his demons go. They were gone, had been for a very long time. But there, in their place were scars and holes, slow to close, tattered and ripped around the edges.

He wanted then, to reach over to her and smooth out her Kagome's edges, to show her what it was to rid oneself of shadows. To leave them, and survive without them.

But as he cast a glance at her, his golden eyes searching and piercing, he found that she was nothing without her flaws, without all she was at that time, sitting on the roof of the roof of the world, small and strong, her own kind of warrior.

No, he would not change her, for in doing so, he would undoubtedly lose more than he bargained for.

Instead, the great Warlord of the Western Lands sat in silence, wandering down paths that twined their way around Kagome, marveling at her rough edges, and her accidental ability to make him wonder.

When night was everywhere in their part of the world, when he felt the last dying step of the men living below, he stood, unfolding to his great height, reaching down to offer his clawed hand to the girl at his feet. She slipped her fingers into his, allowing him to pull her upright.

They looked at each other for the briefest sliver of time, understanding passing in the space between them, before he had wrapped his arm around her and gracefully slipped off the roof, descending to the walkway below.

They walked across the narrow bridge and into the monastery; silent, respectful of all the words that had risen up and out from the secret, dark places they both kept their diligent eyes upon.

He saw her to the door of her room, gently slid the shoji screen open for her, watched as she passed beneath his arm, and heard the surprising sound of his voice, breaking the thick night in two.

"Kagome."

She turned, emerald eyes wide and innocent. Innocent, even with what she had seen and endured, and watched him, waiting for what he had to say.

He opened his mouth to speak, and faltered, stopping short, wary and uncertain.

She smiled then, slowly, easily, and he thought, distantly, that she should do so more often, should have more often, would more often.

"You must let it go."

For a moment, she looked shocked, and then, her frozen smile drifted away on acceptance. But it did not travel far from her eyes, still turned upward into his.

"Sleep well," he murmured as she stepped backwards from the doorway.

He closed the screen and watched her shadow against the low orange glow of the room, reminded of a time long ago. He closed his eyes to the memory of another companion, before he shook himself free of the clutches of recollection, and settled the scene before him in its place.

When a gentle breath dispelled the candlelight, he turned and released himself to the depths of the dark night, tattered and jagged in his own way, as dark and shadowy as the mountain itself. He fell into the quiet, allowing the black night to claim him, resting assured in its arms.

* * *

Kagome listened to the silence above her breathing.

It was complete, utter and total. It pressed down, it pulled her in, it wrapped around her more surely than her skin.

She had always been afraid of the dark and its secrets, but there in the monastery, in the small room she had claimed as her own, she was alone, but not frightened.

And really, not entirely alone.

She strained, listened to the echo soft sound of the man in the room next to her, separated by nothing but a thin screen of wood and paper. She heard the rustle of movement, the sound of a body slipping into a futon, the silence that followed, and she felt her eyes close, as safety secured itself in a way she never thought it would.

She fell asleep and let the darkest of memories go.

* * *

The skies were littered with grey, snowy clouds, and the magic of the monastery could do little to dispel the creeping chill that made its way across the floor to nip at bare feet and toes.

Extra fires were lit and sorcery charged the air with electrified insistence. The men of the secluded place of prayer and study were more inclined to stay in the hot bathing chambers and the cozy dining area where the warmth radiated outward to meet the frigid air of the mountain.

When Sesshoumaru rose to meet the dawn, he made his way to the dojo to train, to wake his bones and muscles, to stretch the warrior and the warlord, to remind him and keep him connected to his quest. When he had practiced the sun up, hiding behind the snow filled clouds, he made his way to the bathing rooms, looking forward to a soak, a steady, relaxing rest.

The water in the large, circular tub filled to the brim, murky and steamy with heat.

He moved with a languid lazy care, muscles rejoicing in the aftermath of a glorious training session. It was early yet; there were few who were awake and moving in the whole of the monastery.

It was, to him, yet another day of waiting for enemies, of waiting for answers.

He was therefore, quite exasperated to find a most peculiar reflection of himself, staring back from the gentle ripples of the water.

He blinked once, leaned closer, and counted the years backwards to the last time he had seen himself thus.

His mind worked in reverse, calling forth memories and images, and when he settled on the face that stared back at him, he was half a millennia back in time, a kingdom at his feet, a demon at his back, his power in his hands.

* * *

When Kagome found the energy she needed to wake, eat and bathe, she assumed it to be nearing noon, as far as she could tell through the heavy cloud cover.

She felt as if she had not slept at all, and even in the daylight hours she was haunted by vague dreams, memories and faces, times and places she had once locked away.

It had not been easy to slice herself open and lay her history out before Taisho, but in the time she had sat upon the roof, comfortable in his presence and understanding of her, she had allowed herself the small slip into intimacy.

She paid for it then, when she woke, questionable regret seeping into her bones. It was not that she did not trust him. Not, that she did not expect him to honor a silent agreement they had made, that she had let him in where no one else had trespassed and he was to keep this safe inside him. No, it was not that.

It was that she had pulled her finger away from the hairline crack of the dam, the water gates flung open, and she did not know how to push everything back inside its neat little container.

She had acknowledged, fully and without preamble, the loss of her family.

They were gone.

And after admitting it so frankly to a man who had never known them, who would never know them, she was left wondering: Now what?

Was it really so simple, to let something so significant to her life simply vanish?

No, she answered herself, it couldn't possibly be.

And yet… and yet, amongst the regret, the feeling that she had betrayed the shrine to her former life, there was a notable settling of peace. It was not all knowing and powerful, she was not made new by revealing such secrets, she was not a better person than she had been in the previous day, she was not granted a new image or a greater ability to analyze her inner workings. She was as she had been, twisted and tangled, light and dark, an enigma wrapped in a paradox, and yet… and yet.

Well, she wasn't quite sure what came after the pause in her mind, she wasn't certain what she needed to fit into the empty blank that had been drawn, the place where she should have written words to define what this new feeling was.

And yet… it did not seem to matter, for she had spoken freely, had spoken with honesty, and, she announced to the murmuring corners of her brain, she had spoken. She had opened her mouth and divulged what she would tell no one else.

What did that mean?

Trust, her mind announced to her, it meant trust.

Kagome found this puzzling indeed.

She would have studied this single, solitary word and how it applied to she and her Protector had she not, at that time, walked through the closed doors of the dojo to be assaulted by the golden blaze of Taisho's power.

Kagome cried out in surprise and threw up her arms to shield her face and head from harm.

The air rumbled the man's surprise, bright and shimmering with his sorcery. She felt, through the channels of space, his body turn to face her, his hand raise and fist, the electric charge disappear from around her to leave a thick coat of gold haze hanging throughout the dojo.

When she did not explode on contact with the magic, she gingerly lowered her arms, blinking as the shining crystals of gold drifted past her eyes.

It was as if the steam from the bathing chambers had risen to the dojo and had, through some backward spell, been infused with the color of Taisho's eyes.

She waved a hand in front of her face, unable to see more than a foot in any direction.

"What in the world is going on?" She called, startled when her voice came out muffled and small, as if she were standing in the midst of a great plane of space, alone and tiny in a sea of nothingness.

"Kagome?"

She heard Ash call her name, distant, far away, perhaps miles away, had she not known the dojo was not big enough to encompass such a span of length.

"Ash?"

She took a step into the wafting gold mist, reaching a hand upward to catch a large golden orb, idly drifting on the still air of the area. It hummed on contact with her skin, warm and radiating.

She watched, fascinated, as it flared and dissipated into the smooth skin of her palm, lighting the pale pigmentation with warm gold, before fading away to nothing.

She looked up, seeing a shadow pass through the molten air.

"Taisho?"

She squinted and took a step foreword, waving away the thick power. It was almost difficult to breath. Every time she inhaled she felt the fuzzy warmth cling to the walls of her chest and lungs.

"Kagome."

The smooth voice sounded out, dull and echoless.

She turned toward his voice to see him glide through the bright mist, appearing out of dark shadow to stand before her, his power rolling off of him as a cape would, shimmering where fabric would not.

Her heart stuttered into an erratic rhythm and her eyes widened at the sight of him.

He merely stared down at her, head high, shoulders back, ever the warrior.

"Is something wrong?" He asked carelessly.

She shook her head, unable to tear her eyes away from his face, the dark, thin, perfectly etched lines across his cheek bone, the same pattern mirrored on his curved shoulders, visible along his wrists and the sides his chest and planed stomach.

They were dark, definite, clearer and more concise than any tattoo would ever be, perfect and slender, sharp, sleek, a glaring contrast to his pale complexion, smooth features, knowing eyes.

"No, nothing is wrong, you just look… different," she finished awkwardly.

He glanced down at his body and back at her, the playful hint of a superior smile making itself known.

"You mean these," his long fingers traced his ribs, touching the two stripes that stretched around the curve of his body, drawn across to his back.

Kagome, an unwilling participant in her own fuzzy astonishment, took a step forward, lost for words.

His teeth bared in a sharp, thirsty smile.

He was different than he had been the night before, razor edged and thrumming with power. She tasted it in the cloudy haze that surrounded them, saw it in his deepening eyes, felt it in the tips of his claws.

He had gained back more of his power.

Another step and she was within arm's distance of him, enthralled, enraptured with the vision before her.

It was hypnotic, heady, the draw of his power, meant to save, meant to kill in the process. He was dangerous, untouchable, and hovering right before her.

More in that split second in time than in any other, she saw him as the harrowing king of a war torn kingdom.

She took another step, innate curiosity overwhelming the natural instinct to turn and run from such a threatening presence.

He stood before her, made no move to turn away, spoke no words, watched her move closer with little bother, his pride worn on his body in the form of the dark markings, his gaze full of something wonton and caged.

She found herself, as if pulled from a dream and plummeted back to the earth, standing underneath him, her neck craning, fixated with the smooth marks on his face. Her right arm moved up and forward, fingers reaching toward the tempting hue of skin, the definite lines calling for her touch.

Her fingers stretched and his hand shot out, wrapping around her own. She stifled the gasp bubbling in her chest, alarmed by the firm grip of his hand and fingers, wrapped around her own.

He did not halt the movement of her arm; rather, through the secure grasp he had on her, guided her tingling fingertips to his smooth cheek, her index and middle finger gently sliding along the markings.

A small shiver worked its way down her arm, sparking where their skin made contact, worming its way over her entire body, raising the fine hairs of her arms and neck. He guided her hand downward across the smooth expanse of his face until she had traced the outlines of the marks, smooth, one with his skin. Downward he drew her hand, until the tips of her fingers caught along the corner of his mouth and whisked over the sharp line of his chin.

Kagome pulled, gently insisting, silently, that she have her hand back, uncomfortable and unsteady with the way his fingers tightened their hold about her palm.

He would not let go.

The haze around them drew inward with each breath that the man took, returning the sorcery to the invisible place he kept his magic, allowing it to leak back into his body and soul. The warmth of the tiny, golden orbs washed over her, further weakening her knees and cracking her cool, calm preservation.

She could not think amidst the dance of his eyes and the hollow gnaw of her middle, so gently insistent, a reminder of their moment on the rooftop, his merciful words echoing in her ear, ghosting over her, whispering in the past.

But all she could hear now was her ragged, staggering breath.

He led her hand through the air; achingly slow, bringing her fingertips to rest at her own lips, brushing the broken skin there. Carefully, gently, he released her hand and it fell away, numb, his fingers moving to replace hers.

She felt the gentle pressure of his calloused fingertips, the grazing warmth that gathered where he touched her.

"Your lips are bleeding."

A golden glow erupted underneath her eyes, momentarily blinding her with its dull intensity.

When he drew his hand away, the glow faded, as had the misty sorcery in the air, only the faintest traces of power remaining. Kagome brought her fingers to her lips, running it across the smooth skin.

The dry, cracked flesh had been healed back to perfection.

Kagome opened her mouth, her breath broken in her chest, stuttering, unable to flow behind her words.

Taisho watched her, emotions drawn and veiled, unwilling to speak.

"Kagome."

She turned, startled. Ash stood to their side, his eyebrow raised, hand on his sword, strapped around his waist.

"Yes?" She asked, distantly, distractedly.

The darker Taisho glared at her contemptuously. "You can't just walk into a dojo like that. You could get killed."

"Well!" Her mind plummeted back to earth, irked at his patronizing tone. "I didn't know you were fighting!"

Behind her, she heard the rustle of robes and the deep, warm chuckle of the Mage. "They were not. I believe that Ash was target practice."

Ash choked on his indignation, glaring at the sorcerer with dark fury.

Kagome raised an eyebrow, shifting her weight, crossing her arms over her chest, giving each of the men a disapproving glare. "I was lost in thought, I wasn't paying attention. You," she pointed to Taisho, standing not more than a half-foot before her, "should be more careful. It won't do to have magic so powerful that when you release it any passerby's can be maimed. This is a dojo where _people _train. More importantly, it is a dojo used by peaceful, pleasant holy men. I think it would inspire bad blood should you accidentally kill one of them."

The man before her raised an indignant eyebrow, but said nothing. She eyed him, trying, and failing to hold onto her disapproval. Curiosity was far more prevalent than distaste, and she found herself asking, "What were you doing? And what," she questioned haltingly, "do those markings have to do with the deathly golden mist that damn near killed me?"

The Mage circled around to stand next to her stoic Protector, his dark eyes trailing up to the dark, clean marks of the man's face.

"He would not have harmed you, Miss Higurashi." Kagome scowled at the patronizing tone, glaring pointedly at the holy man. He ignored her. "It seems that Taisho has received more of his power," the monk answered carefully. Kagome saw Taisho's golden eyes flicker to the side, pinning the mage with a warning stare.

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, thank you, I could see that by the way the air was _glowing_. His power is rolling off of him in waves. It is disturbing the oxygen I am breathing. It is obvious his power has returned. I can feel it. Is that all you are going to tell me? Even after all this time you do not trust me?" She looked pointedly at Taisho who was eyeing her carefully.

When he made no motion to explain, a dull knife of betrayal slipped between her chest cavity and heart, wrenching weakly.

"It has nothing to do with trust," Taisho finally said, his deep, smooth voice flowing over the tense quiet of the room, lulling away the duplicitous emotions churning in her middle.

She caught the certainty in his eyes, even beneath lowered lashes.

"Kagome," her head involuntarily jerked upwards, eyes finding and meeting his, "it has nothing to do with trust and everything to do with timing."

"What? _What_? I'm sorry, but you're going to pull _that_ _now_? I might have been content with that horrible explanation three weeks ago, but _now_?" She massaged her temples, closing her eyes as an icy headache shot between her ears.

Before her the Mage held out his hands, trying to placate her.

"Don't," she held up her own hand before the man, silencing him before he opened his mouth, "patronize me. I already know that he won't tell me anything unless he wants to. You forget that I have been in his presence for… what is it? A month now? Longer? It doesn't matter. We do this all the time. It's a constant power struggle. I want information and he won't give it to me unless he thinks I need to know it. We have a wonderful symbiosis running here, don't even think about interposing yourself in our arguments."

The monk, properly chastised, gave her a sheepish look before fading back to stand at the warrior's side.

She sighed and looked away from them, her hands on her hips, brow drawn severely. She felt three pairs of eyes staring expectantly at her and a twisted laugh echoed out from her chest. "I can see you staring at me. What is it now?"

"We need you to meditate again."

Kagome caught the Mage in her blazing gaze. "Why?"

"Because," Taisho intervened smoothly, "this is not an easy business. Magic is difficult to define and label. It is time consuming and draining to work through another's power. Remember, there are-"

"There are no rules when it comes to great magic. I know. I remember." She waved her hand absently, perturbed, although, she admitted, it had very little to do with a lack of information, and much to do with the mystifying interaction between she and Taisho. A dull fuzz of warmth etched itself along her cheeks at the thought of him, standing so close beside her, her skin still tingling from his healing powers.

A low laugh stabbed at the base of her skull, nettling her. She looked at the Mage, hiding a smile behind wrinkled hands.

"That is quite a Vajra you have, Taisho." He shook his head at her and then looked toward the other two men. "Come, time grows short, we will go to the top of the monastery."

The Mage swept out before them, his dark robes snapping as he made his way out of the dojo. Ash cast a questioning glance at Taisho before following the monk's lead. Kagome looked up at Taisho, who, in the entire time they had stood in the dojo, had hardly taken his eyes off of her.

He seemed to be reading her, leafing through her like the pages of a book, long fingers drawing along the lines, planes, and words, as if searching for something. It was a customary look, piercing and deliberate, but one tinged around the edges, awash with puzzled curiosity, measured intention. He seemed to be asking her, in the silence of his stare, what _exactly_ she was thinking.

The only problem with that silently posed question was that she had no idea as to what aspect of her life she was to attribute that question to. And, in perfect honesty, she was not sure she knew what to think… about any one thing in particular. She had water for a brain and could not seem to ignore the selfish recollection of her fingers on his skin.

_Oh_, she thought.

Bad.

Very bad.

_Exceedingly_ bad.

She did not have the time, will power, or mental state to have a foolhardy infatuation with the man… being... spirit… thing… who was to protect her.

That would be complicated, messy, entangling, silly, and above all, wasteful.

A waste of time, a waste of sleep, and a waste of emotion.

It would be draining; it would steal away her sharp eyes and her quick mind. It would be, as obsessions and moonstruck whims went, debilitating. And really, Kagome had lived for twenty-one years with only the largest of losses and heart falls, and she was not sure she would know, or be able to balance the small ones; on top of the empty cavern that real life had opened.

No, she was not enamored or besotted with a type of farce desire. Or, at least, she said, mentally bringing her foot down in a calamity of firm affirmation, she would not be _anymore_, dare her mind argue that the beginnings of such affections might have already formed.

He was attractive, mysterious, dangerous, dark, light, quiet, and he knew her…. _but_ she was not to be swayed to fall over that perilous cliff of girlish fantasies. She did not have the wherewithal to do so.

And, and! She yelled to her stubborn self, why complicate things? She would probably, oh, hopefully not, die in the course of their adventure. She would be in peril every moment of everyday. She could not afford to give up what little edge she did possess over their enemies.

Besides, he was Taisho and she was Kagome and there was a sword and a matter of genetics between them. Not to mention the question of life spans, years already lived, money, and well, Ajax.

Ajax would not be thrilled with the idea of more Taisho. Or, she acquiesced; Taisho would not be thrilled with the idea of Ajax. And that, was a ridiculous thought in itself because she was _not_ deciding to move in with the man. She was simply undoing any infatuation she might have accidentally developed in the course of their time together. Worrying about the feelings of her dog were, she believed, jumping much too far into an impossible future.

She cringed, clenching her fist, suddenly back in high school, her brain reverting to mush, the poor excuse for the mind of a love struck fourteen year old.

She stumbled for something to say, anything to drive the dangerous thoughts from her head and, despairingly, her heart.

"Vajra?" She sounded breathless to her own ears, as if she had just run up the mountain, chased by her fears.

The man blinked at her question and all of his buzzing, heavy power receded backwards, and abruptly, with no warning, he was the man he had been the day before, only now, he was shirtless and marked, and everything had changed.

He smiled and walked after the quick trail of the monk and his brother, Kagome working twice as hard to keep her short strides in match with his own.

Her eyes momentarily trailed over his defined back, where the dark lines blared, askance and parallel to one another, as if claws had ripped over him, healing to leave prefect, smooth scars in their wake. And there, on his left shoulder blade, thin and filmy, almost incandescent, was an indistinct curve, a half moon, bared to her sights.

"Vajra. It means thunderbolt. I believe he is calling you a handful, a spitfire." She pulled her eyes away and quickened her pace to walk next to him, scoffing even as she tried to catch her breath.

"Well, that's nothing new. Didn't you warn him?"

"I thought I had, but perhaps you are ever surprising to a cloistered monk."

'_Perhaps the globetrotting, curating, sword collecting sort finds the clumsy sort terribly endearing_.'

Old, homesick ghosts, floating around in her head.

She waved them away. She wasn't at the museum anymore; she was there, in Tibet, in a monastery, saving the world.

"He should learn quick then."

The man laughed colorlessly, chuckle dry to the crackling snow filled air. "He should, but he may not."

"No, you men are not prone to quick learning."

He leveled her a glance out of the corner of his eye, disapproving and wry.

They descended into silence, following the dark backs of the two newest members to their purposeful duo.

They found the circular stairs, the center of all hustle and bustle; they turned their eyes upward to the empty room, balanced against a mountain and magical edifice.

"Kagome."

She stepped carefully on the smooth wooden stairs, her bare feet brushing over an ornate rug, hugging the winding steps.

"Yes?" She slipped sideways to avoid being jostled by the holy men descending the steps, gently brushing the arm of the white clad man at her right.

She looked up to him when he did not immediately respond.

His eyes were years away, but whether they were in the past or in the future, she did not know. Whether they hovered on what had been or danced around what could be, she would never know.

When he met her gaze she read the silent words that he found so easy to express, so much easier than spoken communication, so much easier than the voiced discourse.

It was like a language only for him, that silent, quiet speak of his eyes. For him, and on occasion, a rare person like she.

He wanted to tell her. She could see it where his words failed him. He _wanted _to say something to her, but there, a flicker of time turning forward, and she knew he could not speak. Not _yet_.

But then they were at the doors, the narrow walkway, the arching pillars and she was sinking to the floor, enveloped in the pain that came from the Mage's prying sorcery, hoping that this time, they would find what they needed, would uncover her secrets of secrets before she broke and could not be fixed, and the moment had passed, and he could not speak.

* * *

Night found him on the roof of the roof of the world, as Kagome so liked to call it. He stared at the night sky, obscured by the grey clouds, though, he could see, in small pockets of thin moisture the twinkling of the fading cosmos.

That was the time he found peace, when he was close to the heavens. That was where he could cast down all his sins and collect them later, after he had breathed.

And just as night had fallen to the earth to find and claim him, Kagome followed his stoic trail, happening upon his perch on the roof.

With no words between them, he scooped her up and deposited her at his side so they could outrun their memories and all that they had let go of, while sitting still below the universe.

Every time she exhaled he saw the breath leave her body, long and vaporous, hardly discernable to the eye. She had tucked her feet and hands within her robes, burrowing away to dispel the creeping cold.

Not long after they sat together, it began to snow, gently, as if the clouds were afraid to give away too much.

"These are markings," he said to no one, and since there was no one but she, he said it to her.

He saw her turn to look at him, laying her cheek down on her knee, watching him with her eyes reflecting snow.

His long tapered fingers traced the lines of his face following the hesitant trail her fingers had left hours before.

"They signify my clan, my heritage, and more importantly," gold kindled on his fingertips, lighting their faces against the dark, sending the shadows dancing away to the hollows of the night, "my power."

"Then it _is_ still returning." Her voice was hoarse; she was still fatigued from the Mage's spells, the forcible ripping of her soul.

"Yes."

He let his hand fall to his lap, staring down at the stripes, askance on his wrist, hundreds of years gone, alien and foreign to his eyes, even as he welcomed their homecoming.

"Has the Mage made any progress?"

He smiled and clicked his claws together.

"A little. You are very complicated," he offered quietly.

"I didn't need a Mage to tell me that."

He laughed into the night air. "Neither did I."

* * *

Inuyasha was reasonably certain that there were no master's of the sword in the monastery. Or, if there were, they would most certainly not want to spar with him. No, these men liked peace and quiet after years of blood and power.

In his opinion, they all seemed to be clones of one another, calm, decent, contemplative, prayerful. Perhaps, he mused, raising his sword above his head and bending his knees, descending into a difficult position, they were all heavy users of opium. That, to his quick thinking, colorful, energetic mind, seemed to be the only explanation for such a lethargic lifestyle.

He could understand a desire for quiet. Everyone needed those moments now and again, but he was quite sure that he would never be the type of man to give up power and excitement to live behind a wall, secluded on a mountain.

The sword descended and his feet turned his body, following the steps laid out in his mind. He stopped, hovering, his muscles clenched in an effort to hold his limbs steady, keep his blade parallel to his arms and the floor.

Concentrate.

_Concentrate. _

He willed his body to follow his demands, his mind to stay in a rigid, narrow plane of space.

Be patient.

Be calm.

Be at peace.

He felt a bead of sweat trickle down his temple, his breath slipping through his teeth, his fingers twitching around the smooth hilt of the sword.

Good, his mind hissed, his equilibrium holding steady, weight balanced on the balls of his feet.

Good.

He was in control; he was strong and steady, patient, calm, like Sesshoumaru, like his father, like any son of the great being would be.

This fragile strength was all shot to hell a moment later when Kagome barged into the dojo, disrupting the flimsy movements of the air and effectively shattering his collected reserve.

"Damn it!" He yelled.

Whirling around he saw Kagome holding her heart through her jade robes, fingers gripping the fabric there, her eyes wide with surprise and disturbance.

"What is wrong with you?" She yelled back, glaring impressively.

Inuyasha stalked toward her, sword held menacingly before him. Her eyes trailed from his fury contorted face to the weapon in his hands and back again.

And then she sneered.

Sometimes, he thought, hand tightening in infinitesimal, rising displeasure, he really, wanted to swipe her head from her shoulders.

Or something.

It just needed to involve a lot of blood and a reasonable amount of pain on her part. And whatever harm he would hypothetically inflict upon her would also have to be easily fixed, because he did _not_ want to deal with the wrath of his older brother should his anger slip and he _accidentally_ kill the Protector.

When he reached her, he stopped, looming before and above her, glaring imperiously.

She lifted an eyebrow, and to his ego's further horror, stifled a yawn.

Seeing the detached dismay shadow his face grey, Kagome smiled wickedly. "Oh, don't worry Ash, you are the picture of a proper, threatening male, it's just that I had a late night on a rooftop and am finding it difficult to keep my eyes open."

"You," he breathed through red-hot anger, "are a brat."

The girl shook her head and him and side stepped, peering around his black clad form, eyes searching the empty area. "You must know that from your own experience in the department of bratdom. Don't think that you insulted me. In the quiet of my own mind I often admit to being a heinous spoiled half child. Hearing it from you does little to insult me, though, if I tried, I am sure I could turn around your vague insult and metaphorically stab you senseless with my easy wit."

Inuyasha stared at her, agape.

"Is Taisho not here?" She asked, puzzled.

"Your wit might not fail you, but your eyes do. Obviously he's not here. It's a big open expansive room, Kagome. Do you see him?"

"The last time I walked into here there was a golden mist hanging, suspended in the air, and the three of you were lurking around in it doing god knows what. How should I know whether or not you are testing some sort of ancient invisibility technique or something equally impressive but altogether mind boggling to a lowly human such as myself?"

"I… I don't know? He's not here though," he stammered, reaching his free hand back to rub his neck.

"Wonderful. That means I have to climb upwards."

She turned and moved to brush past him, and as the edges of her robes touched the lax hand hanging by his side, a sudden stroke of vapid brilliance washed over him.

"Have you ever wanted to learn how to wield a sword?"

She stopped short, frozen in place by his words.

He could see the muscles tense between her shoulder blades, the way her hands reflexively clenched, felt, rather than heard, the soft intake of surprised air, kindling about her mouth like a question.

"What?" She asked him, her words cracking like the ice and the rock of the mountain they stood upon.

"Have you ever," he stressed every word with simple, bold strokes, "wanted to learn swordplay?" He felt the nebulous curl of unlit delight ache in his chest.

She turned to face him again, suspicious and wary. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you infuriate me. And to teach you would be a good exercise in patience as every moment I will undoubtedly want to cut off one of your appendages."

"Oh."

His explanation was good enough for him, and it seemed to make more than a fair amount of sense to her.

He saw her eyes gleam, playing with time. She was looking to the future, perhaps imagining herself skewering him for daring to dislike her dog.

She had a taste for power and a curiosity unmatched, it seemed only right that she learn to pick up a weapon. And in the process of fumbling, he would beat out his fury and perhaps, learn a little about patience in the process. Although, he chastised himself, fury and patience hardly ever walked hand in hand, and when they did, epic explosions and wars of a titanic and gargantuan nature usually erupted.

Oh, well.

Hopefully, by then, she would be able to hold a sword without cutting her own hand off.

"You want a dignified, solid reason to kill me." Inuyasha shrugged and thought dawned over the girl, lighting her face with humor. "No, because then you would die by Taisho's sword. He would probably draw out that pain, too." She edged closer, a small hand moving to absently stroke a lock of hair. "No, you want to give me enough of an advantage so that when you beat me and perhaps, accidentally cut me once or twice or ten times, it will all be fair and square."

"And," he added carelessly, "it will be diverting."

She laughed out loud, the sound bouncing off the floors to jump into his ears. "Diverting. What is it with powerful men and their diversionary interests? Can't you just admit you have hobbies like the rest of us?"

Inuyasha eyed his sword, sniffing disdainfully. "Kagome, how many men do you know who train with weapons?"

"Two."

His eyes narrowed at her snide comment, the fiendish lilt to her voice. "And neither are they men."

"Fine. By all means, divert away."

He sauntered away, motioning her to follow, smirking, excited, swimming inside his head, a new project rising like dawn before his eyes.

And behind him, the girl grinned, imagining all the ways she might surprise him, hoping that at least one of them would come true.

* * *


	25. Lost for Words

Chapter 25

Lost for Words

Sesshoumaru stood against the wall, gazing out through the open window, resisting the urge to stick his head out and take a deep, cleansing breath.

It was positively stifling in the dank room.

Damn it.

He hated dust. He hated libraries that were not properly attended _because_ they collected dust.

He glared at a low table near the window, dripping with hot candle wax.

It was amazing that all of the ancient and highly valuable tomes, texts, books, and scrolls survived at all. It was as if no one ever entered that particular part of the monastery. As if the magic and spells written in the crumbling pages were nothing but trinkets, easily replaced, worthless.

"Sesshoumaru!" The holy man's voice sounded out, pleasant.

Why, _why_, did the blasted man sound surprised to see him?

"What?" He growled, not bothering to turn from the window.

He was particularly riled on this particular day, in no mood to deal with roguish holy men, recent events tumbling about him in a whirlwind of complicated thought.

First, there had been the impromptu but highly anticipated history of Kagome Higurashi. The unfolding story had not been unpleasant by any means, except for the slight, bothersome empathy that welled in his head and chest every time she had drawn a pained breath. It had been all right with the exception of that.

Except that now that he knew her past and had heard it from her very lips, he could not quite shake the feeling that he had missed _something__somewhere_ and needed to soothe whatever this missing _thing_ was.

What made it worse was that he did not know if it was missing from him or from her.

If it were the latter, he would be in the midst of, potentially, a very complicated something-or-other. And, that, he knew from experience, was not a good thing. Not for him.

Sharp seeded empathy was nearly crossing the imaginary line of what was acceptable in emotional terms, and fixing and nurturing were the devil's gifts to weaker men, so far past the delineated space of actions that were never crossed that it bordered on ludicrous. He could not make her better, could not soothe her life or her past with comfort and well meant words. It was not his job to do so. He did not expect himself to offer help of that nature, and better yet, he knew she did not expect such a thing.

She did not want sympathy. She knew that her story was one amongst a billion. Only one small, tiny, infinitesimal misery compared to many. She did not ask for help, or tears, or calming caresses.

It was enough that she had spoken the unspeakable and he had listened.

So, then, he found it utterly confounding that her words continued to resurface, prodding insistently at him every time he did not keep his mind reasonably busy.

He had seen more than a fair share of misery in his lifetime. Hers was neither the worst nor the most memorable. She was strong, she was Kagome, she was, above all else, stubborn, and would find a way out of her darkness on her own. He was sure of this.

And yet…

His face visibly darkened.

This, he admitted sourly, would not do. He did not have time to worry about her emotional baggage.

He had to untangle the mechanics of his quest.

Fed up, he moved on to the next of his most recent annoyances, ignoring the inner voice that continued to tug at his thoughts about the girl.

From Kagome, there then was the return of his clan markings.

They had been hovering just under the surface of his skin, coming and going as they saw fit, depending on the level of power and control he maintained at any given moment. He had felt them appear and had felt them recede just as quickly. He knew that Kagome had caught glimpses of them in rare moments, but these interludes of time were brief and fleeting.

Imagine his surprise then, to wake the morning after a trusting speech between one Protector and another, to find his markings dark and complete, with no inclination to move off of his face, back, shoulders, ribs, and wrists.

How infuriating it was to gain back his power and wonder if the key to it all was simply trust and understanding.

How _simply_ infuriating.

Because while this idea of emotions and connections was not at all cryptic, it was one of the more difficult ways to go about gaining back his rightfully earned and wielded power. It was not much of a surprise really, it only seemed to reaffirm everything else about he and Kagome, the sword and the very world they survived in, was true.

He had known from the day she granted him his sword, that the object wanted something. He could still taste this desire in its silvery, dark glimmering metal, could hear it on the priestesses words, felt it in the all knowing and infuriating wisdom of the Mage.

He had dubiously acknowledged such a possibility many weeks prior to the moment he gazed at his reflection in the bath water of his morning soak. It was just that once the events of trust and the returning power were so easily linked to one another, Sesshoumaru felt like someone, somewhere, was laughing at him.

But then, he thought, that might have been his own voice, coldly smirking away the hours and pointing an imaginary finger at the outside Sesshoumaru, leering a rather colorful version of, ' I told you so.'

If he had been alive long enough to see the world turn over on itself then he should also have been alive long enough to know _his own__mind_ and recognize things for what they were, to cast aside hubris and accept that sometimes, even he had to stoop. And, really, he assured himself, it was not stooping _much_. He liked the girl. She was distracting and… interesting. He found her trust necessary and at times, enjoyable. That he had to involve himself in messy emotions was not a terrible misfortune, as they were her emotions and not those of someone he loathed.

So, perhaps, maybe, it _was_ such a simple, twisted thing as trust. It didn't matter anyway; trust was needed, wanted, and essential. He would have had it no other way.

Except! He did not like to be told what to do, even when the action was something he acknowledged as necessary.

Damn it. Hell. By the curse of all things wicked. He was going to work himself up in to a frothing frenzy.

He moved on again, before he became enraged and tore the monastery down around their ears, mentally checking off the second of 'all things gone horribly wrong' on his list of unimaginable irritations.

Oh, yes, then there was Inuyasha.

Clumsy, not as much as Kagome, but clumsy in a horribly un-endearing way, a way that could and would get them all killed, Inuyasha.

If the younger Taisho brother insisted on brash audacity to win his battles, he would do nothing but one day impale himself on his own sword.

His or Sesshoumaru's.

The warlord seemed to think it a more likely possibility that his nameless sword would find its way to Inuyasha before any other misfortune befell the younger man.

Inuyasha needed patience, practice, and a good beating before he battled their foes. Before he could be a trusted comrade in arms.

Unfortunately for the Taisho brothers, their enemies were not abiding by their rules or their calendar of events. Time was short and fate was pressing in.

So, there was that to deal with, though he had mostly handed this problem back to its source. Sesshoumaru hoped, for his sibling's sake, that Inuyasha was in the dojo as he practicing, reigning himself into control.

Before he could continue his hateful thoughts regarding his wayward brother a voice broke into his bitter inner tirade.

"You are here early. It is not even dawn yet."

The monk's voice was razor edged inside Sesshoumaru's head, annoying, flippant, an excessive reminder of his troubles.

The holy man, in Sesshoumaru's opinion was not only the fourth and most recent of nuisances, but also, had made, in Sesshoumaru's opinion, not nearly enough progress in the area of defining Kagome Higurashi.

"Have you fallen back into your opium habit? I would think such a thing would be frowned upon by the monkdom," he leveled dispassionately.

The Mage dropped his scrolls onto the table, a fiendish smile crawling onto his face. "Whatever do you mean?"

"It is the middle of the day. I am not early at all. Late perhaps, but certainly not early. I assumed your inability to comprehend the basic workings of the time of day as a side effect of a highly addictive narcotic drug."

The holy man brushed past Sesshoumaru and stuck his head out the open window, gazing out over the snowy landscape. "Oh, so it is indeed. I have been in here far longer than I intended. And, no," he said slyly, although, to Sesshoumaru's satisfaction, somewhat testily, "I have not been inhaling stimulants."

Sesshoumaru leaned against the large frame of the window, crossing his arms over his chest. "And in the time you have been here have you learned anything useful?"

"Well," the man intoned cheerfully, "I have learned that the Protector of your sword is not a dragon in human form, she is not a demon, a troll, a fairy, a miko, an ascetic, or a goddess."

"You believe that to be progress?"

The man frowned and moved back to the large table, unrolling a scroll with his frantic hands. "Ah... I believe so, yes."

Sesshoumaru could have killed him. Probably would have. But fate might not have worked in his favor if he had given into such an impulse.

"What _else_ have you learned?"

The mortal man leaned against the table, his shoulders hunching up to rest underneath his ears, his eyes staring blankly at the old, magic worlds on the frail paper tablet before him.

"It is difficult to explain."

"Do try."

A small smile appeared, sending well-mannered creases about his eyes. "When first I used my powers, she felt like… a void. Not empty, though. No, there was plenty inside, busy and passionate and strong. But, it felt large, and far apart. It was like standing in the midst of a desert underneath a purple sky, before the storms let loose. I could feel the edges of all the things that she is, but they were miles away, where desert turned into something more. And at those edges, she was fully aware, careful to guard and protect. But in the middle…"

He looked up to meet Sesshoumaru's hard eyes. "She was most assuredly something. But it was hidden. I could _feel_ it. On my skin, in my eyes, through my blood. But I could not see it." He sighed, troubled. "But," he said, his voice hushed, an excited note creeping upward to snare Sesshoumaru and pull him inward, "yesterday, when I used my power, she was just as resistant, the desert was still there, and all things were still hidden. But," his voice dropped lower, "but, I fell through the sand beneath my feet, and I was pulled downward, through the unnamed power and into the sky. I could feel the wind rushing past me. Could feel it rushing _through_ me."

His eyes became unfocused, and he was lost in memory, his power surfacing, washing over him in remembrance. "She is like… nature. I can feel the earth in my hands when my magic passes through her. It is as if she is connected to all things and nothing. Strange, really, because if she possessed such a connection, such power, it would have been felt by many more, it would have surfaced sooner. She would have been aware of it. But, there it is, her dormant, untitled power."

"Thank you for those insights, but I was already previously aware of such facts about her. You have shown me nothing new; only you speak in metaphors where I see the truth as it is. I could also have informed you that she was not a dragon, troll, fairy, miko, ascetic, or goddess."

"But you cannot tell me what she _is_."

"Neither can you."

The man smiled, "_Yet_. I cannot tell you yet." He sighed and shifted through his histories and texts. "I still believe my first instincts about her. She gave you back more of your power, I believe. I assume it was after you spent time with one another, perhaps after engaging in well mannered frivolity?"

Sesshoumaru could not stifle the warning growl that caught in his throat. "You would not be insinuating anything in particular would you?"

The other man drew back, shaking his head. "No, apologies, I may be a holy man, but my actions are often anything but virtuous. I am told old habits often die hard. Hard and slowly."

Sesshoumaru pushed himself away from the wall to pace, his mood souring by the second. "We do not have an infinite amount of time to stay here. We need to learn her power and how to use it before we are blindsided by another attack. This is not a fortress. It is not a castle built to withstand the type of enemies we have at our heels. This place may possess many powerful men, but the majority of them are sworn to never use their powers again. If an attack fell here, I would not expect your fellow monks to fight. I know the binding of honorary vows. I do not expect others to involve themselves in my battle. Nor," he added vehemently, "do I need them to do so. It is therefore imperative that we move onward to a sort of completion."

Tired hands leafed through crumbling pages. "But what if she is nothing that I can define? What if it is nothing that has been seen? You, Sesshoumaru, who stands by the age old belief that great power has no limits, no rules, no ordinary bounds, will stake so much in a title, a definition of what she may or may not possess?"

At the opposite end of the table, Sesshoumaru stilled, his hands moving to rest on the cool, pocked wood of the tabletop.

"I do not require her to have a title. I do not need to know the mechanics of what she might be. I don't need you to find me a name, a way to describe her. What I need to know has nothing to do with 'why' and everything to do with 'how'. How does she channel power, how does she grant me the magic of the sword? Does she have power she can learn to use? Do not think I am so blind and foolhardy that I desire a textbook explanation of the protector. _Because_ I believe there are no rules to great power I know that you will not be able to slice her open and dissect every secret, every way in which she works. I _know_ this. What I do not know is how to control, how to manipulate, how to follow _destiny_," he laughed harshly, his voice loud and filed with righteous disbelief, "when I am thwarted left and right."

Across from him, the Mage spoke softly, his voice feather light, like the slow falling snowflakes outside the window. "You do not know how to help her."

Sesshoumaru chuckled, incredulous. "She does not need my help. On occasion she has need of my sword. It is then that I clear a path for her. But she does not need my assistance to overcome her ordeals. Do not misconstrue my words. I do this not out of misguided fondness, but because it must be done. _She_ does not need help, but the world; the world is a different story. They," he raised his hand and gestured to the open window, as if to wave at every person, every being below, "they need our help. _They_ are not as capable of handling themselves as one, Kagome Higurashi."

The mage's smile became strained and Sesshoumaru was given the distinct impression that the man was trying to forget exactly how much pain it caused the sorcerer to use his magic on the girl.

"Well," the man said with feigned lighthearted jocularity, "upon consideration, I find your words to be more true than I wish them to be."

"Yes, well, that _is_ Kagome and she _does_ tend to affect people in a most peculiar fashion."

"Peculiar. Yes, that is one way to describe it," the holy man wheezed, wiping his brow, wincing against memory.

Sesshoumaru grinned viciously, "If that is all, I will leave you to your studies. I can only hope you will have made more progress next we meet here."

He gave the other man a sharp look before sweeping out of the library, trailing a dark cloud of dust behind him.

* * *

"I am fond of every one of my ten fingers, Ash. I will not accidentally lose one of them because you cannot come up with a decent and _safe_ practice weapon for me to use."

Inuyasha scowled down at Kagome. "There aren't any bokkens. Just use this."

He held out a sword, sheathed in its scabbard, nicked and worn with time and use.

"No. There is a good chance the sheath could come off and I could lose a finger. Did I not just explain how attached I am to my appendages? Both physically and mentally?"

He rolled his eyes and held the sword closer. "Kagome, take it. We don't have many choices here."

The young woman glared at him, crossing her arms over her chest, determinedly looking away from him. "Why are there no training swords here? Ones without dangerous edges? This is a dojo, isn't it?" She peered at the rack of weapons, staring at it as if she would, after searching through it for the hundredth time, finally find a less threatening weapon.

"Look, it's this or nothing. I swear you won't get hurt."

Her jaw dropped open and she stared up at him. "Maybe not by your hand! Have you seen how clumsy I am? I mean, truly, Ash, have you?"

Inuyasha thought for a moment, momentarily retracting the sword from under her nose. "Er… yes?"

"If you aren't at all worried about my safety, then you have _not_ seen me in all my graceless glory."

He scowled. "Why are we arguing about this? I thought you wanted to learn!"

She uncurled her arms from her chest, holding up a finger in front of his face. "_Because_ I don't want to lose one of my digits!"

"You _won't_!"

Her eyes narrowed and she prodded his chest with the offending appendage. "I had best not."

" I already told you, you'll be fine."

"_Fine_." She held out her hand and he slapped the sheathed sword into it.

He watched as her fingers curled around the wood of the sheath, her face instantly melting into wary uncertainty. "Ok," she hugged the weapon to her chest, "now what?"

"Now," he said, grinning wickedly, "you defend yourself."

She gaped at him, horrorstruck. "Defend? I don't know the first thing about swords."

She hardly had enough time finish her sentence or to bring the sheath up and block the attach that cracked over the already splintered wood.

Inuyasha bared his teeth in a feral, wild smile. "The quickest way to learn is to make a mistake and correct it. When you do, I'll do the correcting and you'll do the learning."

"But,I- hey!" She stumbled backward, awkwardly swinging the blade around to her side, barely catching his scabbard as it flew at her left arm. She backed away, gasping. "Are you crazy? I have no idea- _ARHG_!"

Kagome never finished her sentence, and opted, instead, to turn and run, as Inuyasha bared down on her, dark mischievous humor fueling his legs as he chased down the girl, swinging his metal sheath at the backs of her legs.

* * *

Aeron was trying very, very hard, not to stare at the shapely legs of the young assistant, hanging all over his desk.

She was saying something, but through the fog of his hazy mind, her words were nothing but dull, echoing sounds.

Doesn't matter, he told himself, eyes firmly planted on the number three-thousand-and-twenty-five, she wasn't saying anything interesting anyway.

Something about her cat, or her best friend who happened to still be in college? That she cannot figure out the instructions for the coffee maker and Dr. Wesley is threatening to fire everyone in the museum because he cannot get his daily caffeine intake?

Was that what she was talking about?

Doesn't matter, he repeated, tapping the yellow pencil gripped in his fingers against the hard wood of the desk, doesn't matter, doesn't matter.

"You know, without your glasses you'd look much younger."

Hello, what was that?

Office… _museum_… flirtation abounding.

He looked up from his dreary numbers and into the blue eyes of the young, blonde, forward assistant. She smiled at him, and where he should have felt a low burning caress of desire, there was nothing but unbridled annoyance.

Wait, that was all wrong.

He was a healthy, attractive, young, or, youthful, yes, youthful, man. He should have been flattered to receive the attentions of a younger, more healthy, more youthful, and by all accounts, more attractive woman.

His inner Aeron, however, did not seem to think as much.

Come, now, he argued, blinking up at the woman leaning against his messy desk, days like the one he was experiencing did not just wander into boring accountant's lives. To be precise, they never wandered into boring accountant's lives. Such long legs and large eyes steered clear of tall, lanky, sarcastic number crunchers.

And really, he contended smoothly, perhaps a torrid, inner museum affair was just what he needed to-

No.

Stop.

Sex, however enticing, was not, unfortunately, the answer to his problems. Oh, it would have been his every dream if it were. But, he was reasonable and had been around the block enough times to know that the long legs, blue eyes, and honey colored hair were not going to fix him. And if he chose to think that way, he would only bring himself a giant, annoying, headache.

After all, he could hardly stand to hear her speak.

He couldn't imagine what life would be like if he had to see her for more than six minutes in every day.

A shudder overcame him, and above, mistaking his reaction for a desiring shiver, the young woman smiled and batted her heavy black eyelashes.

"You'd look downright sexy."

Oh, Christ, he thought, leaning backwards in his chair, marveling at the woman as she sat down on the edge of his table.

Downright sexy?

If he would but only remove his glasses.

But, he could not _see_ without his glasses. His spectacles were imperative to his daily life. They were his way of functioning. To remove them would be to… tumble into the territory of a torrid affair.

He ran a hand over his jaw, feeling the stubble he had missed when he shaved that morning.

The assistant stared down at him, leaning ever closer.

"Miss McClintock-"

"McHenry," She cut in.

"Miss McHenry!" He stood abruptly, accidentally dropping the pencil he had clutched in his hand. He stared down at it as it rolled across the floor to stop at the door. The woman glanced from the writing utensil to him and back again, her confusion beginning to line her forehead. She tried to give him another shiny smile.

He grimaced.

"I am flattered that you think I would look younger and… sexy…without my glasses," he winced involuntarily. "Very flattered. But, unfortunately, we'll have to postpone, or better yet," he moved his hand to her upper arm and pulled her off of his desk, dragging her across the floor to his office door, "we could forget about the whole conversation until a later time… which will hopefully never happen," he muttered, wrenching open the door with his free hand.

"I- but, oh- I- hey, wait a minute-"

He pushed her out into the hallway.

"Well, anyways, Mary-"

"_Molly_."

He waved his hand as if to apologize, "Molly! Thank you for dropping by those files, we here at the accounting office do appreciate your quick delivery time. Well, good luck with the coffee maker!"

And then he slammed the door in her face, breathing a sigh of relief.

He watched through the bubbled, distorted glass as her shadow hovered outside the door, shifting back and forth, indecisive, before moving away in a huff, muttered curses heard through the thin wooden door.

His hand shot out and he locked the door for added security before stooping down to retrieve his pencil and returning to his desk to finish whatever it was that he had started.

He practically fell into his chair, which, as a result, sent him careening about the small office. He was still unaccustomed to his strange, shiny, new rolling chair. It was a nuisance to be exact.

Rolling back to his desk he put his head in his hands, imagining himself anywhere but the museum.

His mind was dark for a moment, and then, creeping at the edge of his subconscious, a small image crawled out, digging its nails into his wakeful mind, haling itself out of the depth of his dreams. He watched as a picture slowly came into focus, dusty and vague against his inner eye.

It was gloomy, shadowy, wherever he was imagining. There were large panels and shelves, erected as if in a hurry, or, he noted, as if they had been added throughout time. It was as if each successive person had a different idea as to how the layout of such a place should be.

Aeron looked to his side; peering into the murky depths of one of the long, dirty ledges. Packed with little or no room between them, were books and scrolls of every shape, size, and orientation. He could see the difference in handwriting from each paper sheaf, opaque with age and use.

Puzzled, wondering why he was conjuring up this particular image, he turned and continued down the cramped aisle between the dilapidated contrasting bookshelves.

It was a long aisle, littered with pages of books, the floor at his feet strange and soft also dusty and covered with age.

He was cautious.

His strange imaginary self, in that strange imaginary place, creeped carefully, assuring himself that his lanky legs and arms did not disturb anything, did not alert anyone of his presence.

Wait.

Why in the hell should he care?

He was only daydreaming.

The man reached the end of the long passageway and his eyes were instantaneously blinded by bright light.

He blinked rapidly, squinting through the harsh, pure rays of sunlight filtering in through the open windows of a cluttered, wide space.

He breathed out dust, his breath rising in the cool air, visible before his eyes. Confused, he held his hand up before his eyes, their slow adjustment hampering his ability to take in the details of the scene.

There were large tables, strewn with papers. He could see the glow of candles in distant corners, though, he could not readily discern why they would be needed, what with the scalding light of the sun.

And then, there, at his right, he saw movement, someone shuffling between the shelves of the enormous, compelling room.

For the first time since he had closed his eyes, Aeron began to feel uneasy.

He tried to open his eyes, only to wince as dust flew into his already wide open organs.

Streaks of ambiguous fear scratched up his spine.

And then, through the light and dust and dark corners of a place he had never seen, a tall man, aged, clothed in strange garments, appeared from between two clustered shelves, a book in his hand, metal glistening around his wrists.

He was enthralled with the text in his wrinkled fingers, one hand trailing over the pages with a reverence Aeron had never seen on the face of any man prior to that moment.

The man paused, hovering before a table stacked high with papers and books, all thrown open, as if he were in the midst of some great discovery. He watched as a finger moved to a spot in the text, holding the man's place as he read, and then, he looked up, gazing out the window, a small smile contorting already pleasant features.

And then he looked toward Aeron, his eyes twinkling.

The accountant drew back, staring as slow rising alarm clutched his middle.

The older man seemed to laugh, his shoulders shuddering, as if a joke had been exchanged between them, and they were old friends, had met everyday in that mysterious place of books and sunlight.

And then there was sadness, bittersweet acceptance shadowing the joviality in those eyes, and the unknown man turned his gaze once more to the bright white sun outside the room, and Aeron faded backwards, unable to pull his eyes away from the man.

It wasn't until he realized he was staring at the lines of his palms, pressed against his glasses, that he understood he was no longer inside his head.

He pulled back his fingers and let out a gasping, tremulous burst of air, turning his head to swiftly, take in his surroundings, placing his fingers on the desk to make sure he was real and he was true and he was alive, there in the quiet museum.

He dragged his glasses off of the bridge of his nose and wiped his perspiring brow. When he regained the mobility of his shaking fingers, he loosened his tie and slumped back in his chair, overwhelmed, lost for words.

He was back.

But, as he attempted to slow the frantic beat of his heart, he could not help but wonder, from where had he returned?

* * *

"Ha, _ha_! Take that!"

"_Damn it_, Kagome! Will you- Ouch! That _hurt_!"

Sesshoumaru frowned and quickened his pace. Already, he was incised, had woken up on the wrong side of a metaphorical futon, his afternoon with the Mage doing little to dispel his calamitous mood.

He approached the dojo, anger mounting, and just when he thought he might call upon his powers to stop whatever it was that was occurring under his nose in the training area, he was pushing open the doors and sliding into the dojo.

He vaulted into the room in time to surprise Kagome, who was waving a sheathed sword above her head, stop short, which, in turn, caused a triumphant Inuyasha to slam into her back, knocking her to the floor. The jubilant look on his younger brother's face melted into ashen terror as his amber eyes landed on Sesshoumaru.

Kagome, who was face first against the woven mat, awkwardly threw the cascading hair which had strewn itself about her face and neck, back over her shoulder, before pushing herself off from the ground and rolling to sit on her backside, flushed and perturbed.

She glared up at Inuyasha, held in thrall by Sesshoumaru's icy, furious glare.

Both brother's were momentarily ripped from their familial issues when Kagome, sitting next to Inuyasha's standing form, drew back her sheathed sword and brought it down along the back's of his knees, effectively crumpling him where he stood.

"_Damn it_!"

Inuyasha sank down to the floor, screwing his eyes shut, one hand splayed in front of him to keep his ailing body upright.

Breathing heavily through his clenched teeth, he looked out from underneath his unruly hair, furious with the young girl sitting idly by his side. She ignored him, and massaged her lower back, also carefully avoiding Sesshoumaru's murderous gaze.

Seething to the point of seeing red, the man stalked forward, with prudent, measured steps.

He could feel the nervous agitation spike from the two mischievous, infuriating companions at his feet.

"What are you doing?"

Kagome's eyes slid to Inuyasha, still doubled over and in, Sesshoumaru assumed, a fair amount of pain.

"Uh," his younger sibling intelligently intoned, "er, yes, about _that_."

Guilty eyes fell onto the swords, felled to the floor.

"He was _teaching_ me. Or so he claims." Kagome said, emotionlessly, finally daring to look up and meet Sesshoumaru's eyes.

"Why?"

Kagome opened her mouth, only to shut it a moment later, eyebrows snapping together in consternation. "Something about patience and uh… something."

Sesshoumaru, although he knew he should not have been, was mildly amused. "You are always so well spoken, Kagome, do not tell me you fail that excellent education when you are caught unawares, in the midst of an activity you are not supposed to be involved in."

She frowned. "That's a bit presumptuous don't you think? No one ever said I could not learn how to use a weapon. Besides, even if you, or any other _authority_ figure had said I was not allowed to, I would most certainly scoff in disdain and then whip out my driver's license and show you a handy little birthday which, by American standards gives me the rights of an adult. And you, Taisho, are not my father. I can do what I please. We've been over this."

Sesshoumaru stifled a yawn, his eyebrow rising with his disinterest. "Be that as it may, I never gave Ash permission to _teach_ you."

Beside the disgruntled museum assistant, his brother winced and cowered further.

"Oh! Oh, no, I see where this is going. You won't let him teach me, and therefore, I will effectively, not learn, because, of course, there is no one else who would be interested in taking up the job! Not to mention," she slanted, sarcastically, "I only know two men who can wield weapons and they are both standing-" she glanced at Inuyasha, slowly unfold himself from his painful position, face contorted with pain. "-One is standing before me," she ended sheepishly.

"You did not ask me to impart my knowledge," Sesshoumaru stated blandly.

"Are you suggesting that you would be willing to do so?"

He smirked, "No."

She scowled.

Mildly curious, he asked, "Are you really so interested in learning?"

Kagome blinked at him before reaching out to gather the pitiful sword into her arms, "Well, I am now that I managed to beat Ash senseless."

"I was going easy on you," the pained man snapped weakly.

She turned to him, cynical, "And that's why you are collapsed on the dojo floor?"

Sesshoumaru snorted elegantly, watching his brother's face turn a dark shade of crimson. He stepped forward and extended his hand to Kagome.

He watched the hesitation, mingled with her blush, flood across her face. When finally she placed her hand in his, he felt her smooth palm glide across his calloused one, his power, humming just underneath his fingers, flaring slightly at the touch of his sword's Protector. He helped Kagome to her feet, ignoring the thrum of his skin, tucking her hand in the crook of his arm as he had so long ago, when they had only but first met.

"Leave the sword. The mage has need of you."

He could feel her displeasure on the air, "If that is our destination and our future company, and it is all the same to you, I will keep the sword with me. Perhaps it will serve as extra incentive to not to injure me in the midst of his sorcery."

"As you wish."

Behind them, Inuyasha tried and failed to get to his feet, "Hey, wait, what about teaching her?"

Sesshoumaru paused, thoughtful. "Did you learn patience in the ensuing time, Ash?"

"More like impatience," Kagome interjected, bemused.

He glanced down at the girl, and saw a wistful hint of her smile, barely contained, eyes alight with the energy from the one sided battle. "Then, we will discuss the matter in depth, at a later time." He glanced back at his grimacing brother, "Although, perhaps, it would be in your best interest not to take on a pupil. You would not want to shorten your life span."

A guttural noise escaped the younger man, but Kagome and Sesshoumaru were already sweeping out of the dojo and into the quieter, more serene areas of the monastery.

* * *

Kagome stared up at the men before her, each watching her with varying amounts of worry.

The Mage, hovering just above her, wrapped his dark garments closer around his body, warding himself from the chill and the flurry of ice crystals whipping through the open area. He wore a worried, apologetic expression on his face, and she could see through his determination, to the hesitation that threatened to end everything before they learned what she was… or wasn't.

And next to him, set farther back, strong against the rising wind and ice, stood her Protector, peering at her with masked emotions. She blinked as the sharp snow fell into her eyes.

He did not like it when the Mage used his power.

Even through her meditation, even through the haze of pain, she could feel the swell of his power, rising up to the heights of the ceiling, balancing just above her, waiting to descend and save her, should he ever need to.

But he was right there, five feet away, and the offending presence was not an enemy, but the Mage, and Taisho was helpless to stop him.

Helpless by his own choice.

She shivered at the glint in his golden eyes. He was stark and shadowed; standing in the bright, grey sunlight, hidden by the haze of white that moved effortlessly over the mountain. He was untouchable and exotic.

Time slowed.

The electricity in the air surged.

She saw him, for a brief glimpse in time, as the world turned, tall and proud, the mountain at his back, his hair whipping steadily through the wind, watched his eyes darken, and almost felt as if she could see himself wishing away his life, his mistakes, the gradual repetition of time.

She, as she waited for the moment in which she would fall inwards and away from the living earth, thought she could _feel_ him come to a conclusion, an understanding.

His brows furrowed, but his eyes did not leave hers.

She thought she saw a tiny shadow around his legs, quick, alive, exhilarated.

And then he spoke, and everything shattered.

"Close your eyes, Kagome."

She didn't want to. She wanted to watch him, to stare up at him, to marvel at him and take him by the shoulders and shake him until he told her everything that he refused to tell anyone else.

But, she closed her eyes, listened to his voice above the sorrowful note on the wind, and felt the Mage's power rise.

This time, though, she was not going to fight him. Not if she could help it. Which remained to be seen. She was not entirely sure how to fight him, nor how to let him. She simple sat and let him use his power.

In the back of her head, she willed herself to let go and allow the invasion of her soul.

A small part of her conscious mind was very much awake as the ancient power surged through her, and instead of holding up her walls to protect her from the intrusion, it stepped aside, though it strained to stop the alien strength rushing forth to the buried, unknown regions of her, she pulled back, reigned in the walls, the doors, the fierce desire to lock away all secrets and keep them fast.

She followed the sweeping barrage of the power, tunneling down further inside of her.

Had she an ability to express what she felt and saw, she would have described it as seeing herself from above, running down a darkened hallway that was familiar but utterly unknown to her.

It was connected to her, but she had never traveled through it, and there, behind doors she could not see, were power that rested within, it was not hers. No, she did not own it, could not use it, could not even find it, but there it sat, and she was keeping it safe.

Her hands reached out inside her mind, tracing along dark walls, her feet running after the blue-black essence of the Mage. She could almost see him ahead in the gloom, but since she could not even see herself, she wasn't sure how readily she should trust her power of sight or perception.

The power stalled, hanging suspended, in awe that it had made it so far into her, there in that secret, locked away space.

And then the darkness melted away and she was falling through a purple sky, the wind rushing about her. She plummeted, and stopped, set gingerly on her feet.

Waves lapped at her ankles, fire burned in her eyes, wind caressed her cheek, sand whipped through past eyes.

She walked on water, she swam through the desert, she ran through the sky, and nestled, cradled in the earth.

It became too much, the overflowing sensations. She could feel a light burning away her understanding of all that was before and within her and when she opened her eyes, she was met with snow and wind, but it was real, and she was Kagome, and there were two puzzled men before her, one gripping the sword at his waist, the other kneeling in pain.

She breathed out, and sucked in ice.

Taisho knelt at her side, watching the Mage as he spoke to her.

"Are you well?"

Kagome thought for a moment. Her body searched for pain, and finding none, she looked into the face of the man, her eyes finding the marks on his face, her fingers itching to touch them.

"Yes."

Gold flashed and she found his face very close, eyes narrowed and searching.

Before he could speak, the Mage looked upward, his face sharp with agony. "We are close. Help me rise, take me to the library, we have much to discuss."

Taisho rose and pulled Kagome upward with him. Together, they helped the old companion to his feet and set out across the snow and back to the inner warmth of the monastery, the mysterious, powerful room echoing its lonely song at their backs.

* * *

The library was dark, the low glow from the candles and hanging lanterns the only source of light. Against the closed windows the snow and wind rattled mournfully, trying to find cracks in the glass, the cold air searching for a way to push itself inward.

The table in which the Mage had been conducting his research stood, piled high with all of his parchments and books, his own scrolls and notes littering the space of the floor. The man stood, leafing through his papers, his movements sluggish, his power weak from use.

Sesshoumaru set a chair before the messy table, motioning for Kagome to seat herself. The girl cast him a grateful look before sitting, hunching down in the chair, her fingers wrapping her gowns around her feet to keep them warm.

She appeared to be fine, unaltered, for the first time since the Mage had begun his dissection of her. That, Sesshoumaru knew, was unexpected and surprising. He did not know whether that boded well for progress or not. The Mage seemed to think it did, but he, dark and hesitant, did not readily trust the sudden declaration made by the holy man.

His instincts told him not to trust, and trust he hardly ever did. If he was the authority, he saw rare need or reason to make himself vulnerable in such a way. When he was required to trust the word of another, he was surely, surely, at odds with the world, as seemed to be the case with this journey. For, he acknowledged, fate wanted odd, peculiar things from him, odd, peculiar things that required him to hand his life over to others, and to follow their instruction instead of his own.

His hand moved to the back of Kagome's chair, gripping it with his claws, the weak wood cracking beneath his strength.

The girl looked up at him, disturbance worn clearly in her eyes and across her face. His hand tightened, muscles spasming against the slight strain of the chair. He saw worry, grey and young, inside her green eyes. He paused, his sharp, double-edged anger momentarily forgotten as he gazed at the face before him.

For the first time in a long time, he looked at her with clear eyes. He had been clouded with her admissions and her secrets, her difficult trust of him. He had been watching her closely since his power returned, had gone over each scenario and each way everything could have happened, the way it should have happened, and the way it _had_ happened, unfolding to bring them to where they were.

He took in the soft curve of her dark eyelashes, the tinge on her cheeks, the pleasant curve of her damned, cracked, bleeding lips.

His fingers itched, burning quite suddenly, almost startling him.

They uncurled from the back of the chair, and reached, of their own accord, toward her face. Gently, oh so careful of the very breakable human before him, he brushed his fingers across her broken line of skin, the warmth that had existed on his fingertips flaring into his healing power, tracing her lips.

"Your lips are bleeding," he murmured, though his voice sounded strange and far away, which was ridiculous as he was standing within his own head, staring down at a complicated young woman, blinking rapidly at him.

Over his hand, he saw her eyes go wide, ignored the possible cause for that action, avoided looking at her hammering pulse, tripping at the base of her throat, and swept two of his fingers back across her skin, marveling at the contrast between his rough fingertips and her smooth lips.

He withdrew his hand, only vaguely, just barely wondering why his fingers continued to burn, before forcibly wrenching his eyes away from hers to watch the fumbling Mage, burrowing within his papers. Beneath him, he could see Kagome stare at him for one, long, drawn out second, before lowering her head and turning to face forward again, hunching further into herself, as if to hide from his scrutiny.

"Here," the Mage stated to the quiet depth of the two people in front of him.

In one hand he held clean parchment and in another was a quill pen, already dripping with ink. He looked up at them after clearing a space away, making room on the cluttered table to write.

"Now, tell me everything."

Sesshoumaru remained silent and Kagome shifted uncomfortably.

"What do you mean?" She asked, her voice swallowed by the depth of the room.

The dark robes whispered as the Mage moved, raising his hand, clutching the quill pen, and waved, impatient, "Everything. The sword, the supposed fate. Tell me the important details. Everything."

Although he could not see her face, standing above and behind her, Sesshoumaru could feel Kagome's eyes narrow as disbelief ricocheted in her aura. "You haven't discussed all this before? You and Taisho?"

The mage looked up from his fumbling within his robes, producing a pair of delicate looking golden spectacles, placing them gently on the bridge of his nose, before casting about and finding a suitable look of puzzlement. "I have not discussed such things with Taisho, no."

Kagome turned in her chair and stared up at him. "Are the two of you _trying_ to make this more difficult for yourselves? Why would you not have talked this out earlier? You realize that the quickest way to solve a problem is by starting with what you know, don't you?" Sesshoumaru blinked at her and she glowered, turning back to the Mage. "Basics of Archaeology and," she stressed, voice thick with amusement, "any other field which requires problem solving. I can't believe the two of you are so proud that you can't even talk to one another and impart your knowledge. We, in our rag tag group, seem to suffer huge communication problems."

The Mage smiled a little, reflective. "Pride is not lacking, that is certain. I can readily admit it as one of my worst foibles. Perhaps then," he offered pleasantly, gazing at Sesshoumaru through the glare of his glasses, " we can make up for it now, and be forthright with one another."

Sesshoumaru leveled the man with a quietly menacing gaze, one the holy man chose to flippantly ignore, casting his attention back to the young woman huddled in the chair.

"I dreamed of the Protector," Sesshoumaru offered, tiredly going through the history… _again_, "I followed my dreams, my visions, if you will. They led me to Kagome. She admitted to having some sort of… enhanced ability to sense things, to feel things, disturbances. The sword responded immediately to her. She, in the ensuing battle at my mansion in the States, granted my the use of my sword-"

"Stop there!" The Mage interrupted, bending down to scrawl furiously across the page. "Was it a conscious grant of the weapon?"

"How do you mean?" Kagome asked, leaning forward in her chair. Sesshoumaru fought back his amusement. She was _always_ so damned curious.

"Were you aware of what you were doing?"

Her head tipped to the side, and he could almost see her thoughts wafting above her head. "No, I don't think so. I was choking to death, slightly unconscious, but I remember his voice, asking for the sword." She looked over her shoulder at him, face pinched as she tried to remember. "Did I speak to you?"

Sesshoumaru shook his head, "No, you did not. You were choking to death, remember?"

His comment did not divert her from the task at hand, and she turned back to the man across the table, far too enthralled in the present discussion to rise to Sesshoumaru's bait.

"Unconscious then," the Mage announced, blinking at them through the sharpened magnification of his spectacles. He dropped to the parchment once more, hand trailing across the brittle paper, leaving inked lines in its wake. "Continue."

"Then," Kagome picked up the story, haltingly, as if she were recalling something from the deepest recesses of her memory, "When I awoke, he was different, changed. I-"

"Physically altered? The sword held much of your power then, and granted enough back that you reverted to a less human form of yourself. Interesting. I do not recall designing it to do so," the man muttered, running a hand across his chin. "Interesting. Carry on."

Kagome sighed and placed he elbow on the arm of the chair, leaning her cheek into her hand. "He healed my injuries and we came to Japan."

Sesshoumaru shifted and the Mage stopped writing, looking at him expectantly. "I conversed with the sword first. It told me I needed Kagome. _Then_ we traveled to Japan. I went to the priestess, she purified and healed my arm-"

"That was when I felt his pain. I caught glimpses of his mind and where he was." Kagome interjected, glancing up at the man, furtive, uneasy.

The monk pursed his lips. "That is not unsurprising. As the Protector of the sword, you would be bound to the weapon. It seems to me, given its forging and the spells I cast upon it, that it would have a sort of… how do you say… failsafe? Yes, a failsafe. Taisho," the Mage nodded at him, his golden glasses slipping down his nose, "is the master of the blade, although he does not and did not at the time, master all of the power, and since you, Miss Higarashi, have been deemed the Protector, you are bound to the weapon through duty, honor, and in some ways, by magic. Since Taisho was injured, which rarely, if ever occurs, you were most likely warned by the weapon. It has a way of alerting you that it is in need of one of the two individuals who watch over it.

I can only assume this though; my original spells have been twisted and corroded, turned into something else entirely. I can feel my magic within the blade, but it is not purely mine. Nor is it a part of three, the Mage, the Forger, the Warlord. The weapon is much different; it is not simple pieces and parts any longer. In truth, I cannot tell you every spell that I placed on the weapon, I am human and possess a limited capacity to remember, and that," he smiled, his eyes twinkling, "was a very long time ago."

He sighed, his eyes going out of focus, staring at the white blur outside the windows, cold and icy, frightening in its intensity.

"I recall you saying that you could sometimes feel the touch of the Protector on the sword, Taisho?"

Sesshoumaru nodded once and saw Kagome stiffen in the chair, freezing into place. He was reasonably certain all the blood had drained from her face.

"Yes. I can, at times."

"It is the same bond that ties the three together. I cannot, again, say for certain that I am right, but," he blew on the feather of the quill, watching the movement with curious eyes, "I believe some of the sword's interaction between the two of you has lessened because you are now closer than you were. Before, when you did not know each other well, you needed the sword to keep you together, now," he looked up and Sesshoumaru caught the wicked grin that flashed across his face, "now things are different. Continue."

Sesshoumaru spoke. "I returned, we exchanged… _words_," he glanced down at the top of her head, but Kagome did not look up at him to see his half smile, glittering in the half dark, "And then she withdrew my rights to the blade-"

"Wait!" Kagome interrupted sitting upright, spinning around in the chair to face him. "You're forgetting when the wind spirit came within your borders and you disappeared. That was-"

"Unimportant."

Both Sesshoumaru and Kagome looked up to the Mage, stern and immovable, face drawn with displeasure. "It is of no matter. Continue, Taisho."

Sesshoumaru breathed a silent sigh. For once, he could say with conviction, the man had done something right.

Now was not the time to speak of such matters. Now, he admitted, was not the time to lose Kagome's trust.

"Kagome accidentally withdrew my rights to the blade and then promptly collapsed. I believe it was her first vision."

The Mage paused in his writing, glancing at the girl over the rims of his spectacles. "And what did you envision, Miss Higurashi?"

"The northern plain and the Shikon site."

The holy man nodded and dashed his pen across the page. "Then?"

"We traveled to the site." Sesshoumaru moved from his position behind Kagome's chair, sauntering over to stand beside her, one hand still resting on the curved wood of the back of her seat. "The demon and his servant made an appearance. We battled. Kagome stayed within the confines of the tree until-"

"Until, somehow, I became infused with its power and I took the sword and thrust it into the cliff face, decimating it and our enemy." She finished quietly.

The Mage removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes before replacing them on his face. "Again, was it unconscious or did you know what you were doing?"

"I knew what I was supposed to do, but only because the tree told me, or rather, showed me what to do," She offered, shifting in her seat, untucking her feet to let them dangle just above the floor.

"I see. Next?"

Kagome fiddled with the edges of the table, her fingers nimbly finding the pocketed places where splinters liked to appear. "I had another vision, this time it was only of the northern plain, where the wood spirit was held. We traveled there, I spoke with the spirit, she told me of fate, of completing the whole, and then gave me a vision of this place."

"Which, in turn, brought you here, to sit in the library, and explain your whole, long, complicated story." The holy man laughed lightheartedly.

"And that's that," Kagome said, so quietly only Sesshoumaru heard her.

He glanced down at her. "And that," he agreed, "is that."

She looked up at him and a tiny smile, almost invisible, lightened her eyes.

The Mage stood, holding the paper before him, his writing up and down, everywhere, curving along the edge of the parchment, words bleeding into one another. Behind him, through the messy clutter of shelves and tables, the heavy door of the library opened, and Inuyasha walked in, squinting, his eyes adjusting to the dark.

"Ah, Ash," the Mage called pleasantly, a dark note jutting into his seemingly unbothered tone, "if you would, do me the favor of escorting Miss Higurashi to dinner, I must speak with Taisho."

Inuyasha opened his mouth to answer and sneezed instead, covering his nose against the offending dust of the place.

Kagome slipped out of the chair, tossing an unreadable look back at Sesshoumaru before wrapping a hand around Inuyasha's arm and dragging him, sneezing, eyes watering, out of the library.

Sesshoumaru watched the green of her retreating back, attention nowhere but in the small space she existed, until she was out the door and moving somewhere, still held within his power, half of him divided, one part following her out the door, the other moving his eyes to the Mage, bent with an invisible weight, slumped against the table.

His old, tired hands were splayed wide, and he appeared to be staring at the open page of one of his texts.

"I need a fortnight."

Sesshoumaru was brought up short, his thoughts and concerns which, before the Mage chose to so unwisely open his mouth and speak, had been mildly hopeful, a sort of tired bemusement he allowed himself to occasionally divulge in. But then, as he turned fanning, fiery golden eyes on his one time companion, the man had always possessed phenomenal ability to infuriate him.

"I do hope you are joking, Mage."

The man shook his head, standing straight, removing his glasses to tuck them away in his robes. " I am not, for I know you are never a man to laugh."

"We do not have a fortnight. Even after all we told you, even after the countless times you have used your power you still have no idea what she is? I find that incredibly difficult to believe."

The man shook his head, eyes lost of humor. "I have plenty of ideas, but I also do not wish to misinform you. If this is fate then let it take its course. If our enemies appear before the allotted time I need, then we can revise. Sesshoumaru, I need a fortnight." His dark eyes met Sesshoumaru's golden ones, weary, tired, full of despair.

"What do you know?" He asked quietly.

The Mage shook his head, "Do not ask me to tell you when I cannot explain it to myself. Two weeks. Give me until then."

Sesshoumaru weighed his options, disdainfully lifted his head against fate and then gave into his better judgment, however much it hurt his pride to do so.

"Two weeks."

And then the Warlord of the Western Lands turned on his heel, parted the dusty air, and left a tired man to claim his own destiny, however unwelcome, however tragic, however beautiful, however it was meant to be.

Outside the snow was heavy, and the mountain wept.


	26. Stunning Ruin

**Chapter 26 **

**Stunning Ruin**

Inuyasha sat on the edge of the railing, his feet dangling dangerously, situated perilously above the red tiled roofs, mashed and rising at each level, from around him and upwards, downwards even, to the bottom of the monastery floor.

It was still snowing, and the dark night was waiting to fall, clamoring at the edges of a grey day, waiting to claim its place in the world.

He blinked his bright amber eyes against the sting in the air, his mind far back and away, lost in reverie.

He was entwined in dark hair, quiet eyes, the echo soft feeling of the calloused fingers on the backs of his bruised knuckles, the porcelain skin, the gentle curve of cream and crimson, tossed high in a summer wind, the valley of grass surrounding the meager villages, a smile, so small and gently invisible, bright against the grey depths of an ordinary temple.

He was remembering quiet nights, the futility of prayer, his long form stretched on the floor of the shrine, eyes watching the tender movements of the woman he loved, moving amidst the candlelight.

He inhaled and tasted summer, lilac, cherry blossoms, the clear water of the stream just outside the village, and the warped wood of the little bridge creaking under his weight, the gentle splash of water from a bucket, his hands busied with the sword at his side, his brash young optimism winding a song above his head, his thirst to prove himself strong in the back of his throat, but his desire to be loved by the dark beauty who had claimed him from the moment he had seen her, first in his mind, in his soul.

He recalled the blaze of summer, the cool of autumn, the fires of winter, and the sweet smell of spring. Whispered conversations, quiet, unchecked adoration, and then the slow burn of war, the rise of vengeance, the course of his enemies bent on destruction.

He remembered the blood, the betrayal, the last time he walked the dirt paths of his most favorite home, the last time he watched the lanterns of the temple flare to life, the last time he ran his fingers through the thick, black mane of hair, the last time he had laid a gentle kiss at the hollow of the most beautiful and darkly devout of throats.

He closed his eyes, swallowing the agony welling in his mouth, further buried the knife of deception that he had never willfully removed from his heart, and opened his eyes again, to stare at the silent, grey snowfall.

There was a gentle disturbance behind him, the screen leading to his room sliding against its wood base. He turned, catching sight of his brother, moving through the shadows of a snowy evening.

Sesshoumaru made his way out onto the balcony to stand beside Inuyasha. The brothers were silent for a few minutes, neither finding it a necessary time to speak.

In rare moments, their familial ties were stronger than their differences, and at those precious times, they were both sons of their father, and could exist in peace and certainty.

Sometimes, Inuyasha admitted, it was enough to know he wasn't alone, that, when everything else tore him apart, he was at least bound to one person, even if it was by blood alone.

"Has the Mage told you anything of value?" He asked carefully, trying to gauge Sesshoumaru's mood.

The man shifted his weight and leaned against the railing, staring down at the red and black tiled rooftops below, slowly gathering with fine, light snow.

"No, he has not. He has, in fact, requested a fortnight more to discern what exactly Kagome is."

Inuyasha nodded absently. "I suppose that doesn't bode well for your schedule."

A low laugh tripped out from the man's chest. "No, it does not. I am not entirely certain I need to know what she is, or how she wields her power, as long as she continues to have visions which lead us in the right direction, it does not much matter."

Inuyasha slanted a look at his older brother, curious. "What if its important, what she is?"

A tiny, indiscernible shrug of the shoulders, and Sesshoumaru was staring back. "It is important, but so are other, more pressing matters. Our enemies know that we are here. They knew we traveled up the mountain. It is only a matter of time before they come in force. I would prefer to be far from here when they descend."

Cold fingers traced low in Inuyasha's stomach, leaving him vacant and dismayed. "You wouldn't leave the monks to fight our enemies, even after they housed us and protected us? We'll be taking their greatest and strongest with us when we leave."

Sesshoumaru's golden eyes hovered on Inuyasha's face, before turning once more toward the scenery. "No, I would not leave them to fight our battle. We would leave a trail, magical breadcrumbs," he snorted, steel in his eyes, "and they would follow. There are enough men here to deter them should our adversaries decide to attack anyway. As it is, I am almost certain we will be here when the attack falls.

I hear the whispering of the men. There is at least one traitor amongst them. I do not know whom, and it does not matter. We only need to keep Kagome safe, she, the sword, and the secrets of both. It is no great secret that the Mage is here, that the Taisho brothers trekked the mountain. My face has been seen in more places in this world in the past weeks than in a dozen years. And you," he cast a cursory glance over Inuyasha's darker form, "you are out from Tokyo for the first time in fifteen years. Word travels fast, and we did not try to conceal ourselves. We play a dangerous game, gambling as we do. It is only, as always, a matter of time before our enemies come."

Inuyasha had nothing to say to this, as he already knew the truth of such words. He lived them everyday. Had always.

There had been a time once, where life was beautiful and he saw it as he would a painting, etched, plastered, messy, but wonderful. Those times were gone, the lazy few years that haunted him with ghosts of happiness. Gone, and in their place, the cold, merciless life of solitary vengeance.

Only _now_, it wasn't so solitary. In a some very small, fleeting ways, his wild abandon was forgotten, lulled away, his mischief and laughter returning at rare times, there, with the two individuals he expected the least from.

He never assumed he would find a tiny patch of redemption in the man, Sesshoumaru and the girl, Kagome. But it was there, raw, new, and hopelessly fragile, in the form of blood, in the teachings of the sword.

Inuyasha smiled away the past, tossing his head, allowing the steady fall of snow to grace his face and hair with its cold, shivering fingers.

"It's about time we finished up this thing, anyway. Why not advertise?"

Sesshoumaru chose not to answer, and Inuyasha didn't mind much, as that was they way things had always been, and to change them now would be altogether wrong.

"You may teach her," he said suddenly, " but only if you understand that it is not for you, but she. You cannot teach when it is for personal gain. She will not learn and neither will you. Do it right, or not at all." He straightened and turned to leave, his voice trailing back to Inuyasha's ears. "She will never be great, she will not be a prodigy. She is too old, and," there was a laugh coloring his voice light, "far too clumsy. But she is smart and quick and is more like you than you know. You can teach her what she needs to know to survive and that will have to do."

Inuyasha listened to the silent steps of his brother, the thin sound of his robes passing through the door of his chamber, before sighing into the cold air, eyes to the hidden, descending sun, and the cloistered, cold moon.

His voice was a whisper on the wind, bittersweet and soft, "But she will do great things, just the same."

* * *

Kagome sat against her far wall, staring out at her balcony, watching the gentle descent of the snow through the small, open crack in her shoji screen. She sighed and glanced down at her knees where her claimed weapon sat, mild and tired, its sheath broken and cracked, splintered in so many places it was difficult to find a place to hold it. Gingerly, she slid the worn blade from its protective covering, allowing its dull edges to scrape along her covered knees. There was a sort of twisted beauty about the inanimate object, scratched and used as it was.

It was a castaway, imperfect, once loved, neglected in its age, past its prime.

Kagome had always found a sad, bittersweet need to collect the things no one else wanted. Sometimes she could save them and keep them fast, but many times, it was outside her capacity to save all things broken and in need of mending.

Most of the time, she settled for the small things, a trinket found at an eclectic store, a sweater with a hole where no one could see it, a pair of shoes so ugly they might as well be beautiful. There were always flaws, and flaws, as the Mage had so simply said, were necessary, were a reminder of humanity.

She stared at her reflection, marred by the chips and scratches in the forged metals, an ache rising in her chest, buoyed by her unexpected loneliness.

She wished Ajax were there, sitting on her feet.

Guilt ran a pretty circle around her heart, drawing designs she could not erase.

Sure, she was on a fast track to save the world, but, in the process, she was letting down the one being that truly relied on her. Perhaps, if Ajax could speak, he would tell her that is was ok, that he understood why she left him. But he could not, and even while Kagome knew she had to follow through, she could not stop the remorse that trudged through her middle, clenching her stomach into painful knots.

Her fingers, off in their own guilt free world, twitched, accidentally descended to touch the cool flat of the blade. She ran her fingertips across the surface, hissing when the notches and missing pieces caught on her skin, drawing blood.

"Stupid sword. You're of no use to anybody. Why do I keep you?"

Metaphors, it seemed to answer.

Yes, she agreed, dejected, metaphors.

How sadly poetic.

Outside, the wind increased, nearing a howl, a high pitched note winding the air into a nervous frenzy, setting her teeth on edge, shattering her enjoyment of the scene.

A gentle tap at her door startled her from her displeasure.

She looked up as Ash stuck his head in the room, eyes bright and animated.

"Come on," he demanded, almost audaciously, as if he had been looking everywhere for her, as if she had missed an important appointment, "let's go."

"Go?" She asked stupidly, "Go where?"

He disappeared from her door, taking his flashing grin with him. "To the dojo," he called, "and bring that busted sword with you."

Kagome rose to her feet, a hesitant smile dispelling her misgivings, sending her grey, lonely thoughts back to their corners, and she stood, pulling the sword up with her, a small jubilance taking root in her heart.

Glancing at the weapon, she turned it to the light, allowing the grey day to wink of the chipped edges.

"Looks like we found some use for you after all."

Sheathing the sword she smiled at the triumphant ring of grating metal, and hurried after Ash, slipping out her door in a flash of green victory.

* * *

The Mage, the Miroku, The Maitreya Bodhisattva, the holy man, the monk, the former sorcerer, stared out the window of his humble room, watching the white fury of the snow storm.

The mountain he had come to live on echoed of power, its voice a low, dull hum, even against the rage of the winds.

The wind may have howled, the sky may have fallen, but always, always, the earth rested still.

It was times, days, hours, seconds, moments like the one before him that made his fingers itch for his weapon, lost to the underworld, a futile attempt to stave off tragedy. Sometimes, when he concentrated, when he pictured it in his mind, he could feel the cool, knotted wood under his fingertips, could see the golden rings jingling against the deep, dark grains of carved branches.

His dark eyes fell to the golden rings around his wrists.

There were many missing, consigned to the place in between, lost forever until he reclaimed them himself.

It was a sobering thought.

That he would have to die to reclaim some of his most precious possessions.

But, fate was a funny thing, and he, after his many years of wandering, of sorrow and then redemption, had come to accept it readily, even when it seemed like cosmically, someone had royally mishandled all. In moments of great swelling power, the man felt as if he could step out and above, and watch the billions, the uncountable silver threads of lives winding and weaving, crossing over and fading as fate played the watchful guardian, its long ethereal fingers guiding each strand as it saw fit.

Yes, fate was very real, but he would not be the man to convince his oldest friend and companion of this. It was not his duty to do so. Moreover, he personally believed it to be an impossible task. And so, he could do little more than play his own part, his own twisted, complicated, blind part, his fate, his providence.

He was not afraid of the demon or of death. In fact, a small part of him would welcome it with open arms while the rest of him kept an aloof, reserved opinion about it. He had not lost the will to live, but he had lost the life he once had.

Somewhere in his wanderings he had found peace and fulfillment, after all those bloody, young years. He was tired when he found home, he was tired and he was not looking for peace or acceptance. He was ready to bear all that he had done on his own. He had been fine with that. He was a realist, even while a dreamer. But at the strangest of times, he came back to the world and lived, as he never had before.

Those times were gone, passed as the seasons had, and he knew fate had pulled him again, blowing him onward with the winds, to stand at a monastery step and stare up into its shadowy edges.

That had been many years ago, the day when he stood at the gates of the holy place, staring at it in mild wonder. He had lived too long to truly be surprised by much, and even though he was prone to laughter and quick, witty thoughts, inside he was much more solemn than most saw. So, to stand at the base of a magical community was not much of a stretch for a man who had lived for centuries, not much for a man who had walked beside one of the greatest warriors of the earth, not much for a man who had held the gates of hell open with his bare hands. It wasn't much, but it was something.

And so there he was, a different man, a _holy man_, staring out into a storm, remembering a different time, when he was nothing but a man, when he was not the sorcerer, not the supposed Miroku, not the Mage, and not the holy man. It was a time in between the war and before the monastery, and he was ready to return, to reclaim a small piece of that life.

And he knew, with little help, that to do so was to die, and to die was to end himself forever.

Oh, well.

There were worse things, surely.

And after all, there was someone waiting for him, not too far past the doors of the underworld.

She would be glad to see him; he knew this better than he knew his fate, better than he knew the treachery of man's hearts, the foolhardy hope of young love. He knew her best, and she would be there, at the ready, a different kind of adventure, his only home.

She would be there and he would be at peace.

He turned from the snow, from the living mountain, from the gentle, heavy-hearted musings, and returned to the present, the future, and the role fate had given him so long ago, before he knew the ways of the world, the unpredictable way the world took him over.

In the warmth of the lanterns and dancing candlelight, he smiled against the dark shadows of his future and his enemies, a quiet, melancholy hum ringing in his throat, coloring the air with the memory of better days, the possibility of a hopeful future.

* * *

Inuyasha sighed, staring at the ceiling of the dojo, white and flawless. He flexed his fingers, slightly cramped under the weight of his head.

Beside him, Kagome lay on her stomach, her chin resting on the backs of her hands, her bright eyes trained on the drawn sword, lying listlessly in front of her hands.

"You know, there are a hundred better swords you could use, just there, over on that rack, and oh! Look, another, over there, in that far corner."

Kagome squinted at him, eyes trailing a warning she reiterated with her mouth, "No, Ash. I like this sword."

"Why? It's hardly sharp anymore and it's all cracked and chipped. It was not a good sword to begin with, look here, see, there's a flaw in its forging and-"

She slapped his hand away, face betraying her displeasure. "I can see that. I have an excellent eye for detail. I know that it is not as beautiful as your weapon or Taisho's. But I like it and it's mine for now, so let it be."

He rolled his eyes and placed his hand back under his head. "Fine. How did you like your first lesson?"

She snorted. "I learned how to correctly hold a sword, how likable was it supposed to be?"

"_Of course_ you learned to properly hold a sword. So? What did you think?" The young woman frowned and Inuyasha smiled. "That's where we should have started to begin with. _Not_ you flailing wildly and hitting me across the backs of my knees."

"That," she protested vehemently, "was your idea!"

Inuyasha exhaled impatiently, blowing a wayward lock of black hair from his eyes, "Yes, and we shouldn't have started there. We should start with the basics. I can only teach you the most straightforward and minimal of defenses and maybe, if you learn quickly, a few attacks. I'm not a master of the sword nor do I possess the patience to become one. Therefore, my limits as a teacher are… limited." His brows drew together as he heard himself speak.

It was strange how easy the truth rolled off his tongue, as if it were nothing, as if he were discussing the weather.

He caught Kagome watching him, curious, a question hanging around her head, on the verge of manifesting itself in words.

"What?" He asked, perturbed that he had so easily spoken the thoughts that ran around his mind.

Her frown deepened, though it was not from the edge that crept into his voice. She was thinking, her eyes moving back to the sword gleaming not but an inch in front of her face.

"Where were you before you came to the join our quest, Ash?"

He became very still, her words throttling him backward, instantly conjuring dark memories. Sensing his turmoil, she turned her face to him, leaning it against one of her hands, splayed on the tatami mat.

"I'm sorry," her voice was full of quiet regret, "I didn't mean to pry. I was just interested-"

"No." He cut her off, his voice loud, nearly deafening, echoing in the quiet space they lay. "No," he said again, quieter, with greater care. "I don't mind." He paused, drawing in a deep breath, stretching his legs, bringing one knee up, letting his other leg lay parallel to the floor.

He looked toward the young woman he found so utterly confounding, and felt the slow crawl of a smile, uninvited, but true and sincere, spread across his lips. She watched him from behind light eyes, always sharp and eager, smart, careful and precise.

"I was in Tokyo."

"Why?"

He wrinkled his nose, turning his head back to his perusal of the ceiling, as if there were something of great interest there, when, in reality, it was nothing but empty space, nonexistent color.

He winced in memory, recalling the clamoring hoards of people, the loud city streets, the never-ending buzz of activity.

"There were enemies after me. I had to go into hiding." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kagome's face, rapt with attention. "Once, they were only Taisho's enemies, but when they found out about me…" He trailed off, bitter.

"What do you mean?"

Inuyasha sighed, long and loud, a despairing sound, full of unspoken vexation and spiteful words. He rolled onto his side, propping his head in his hand, examining her, thinking to himself.

It couldn't hurt, to tell her of the past. Not as long as he didn't reveal that which could unravel all. No, _that_ secret was not a matter of the past, but a matter of identity. And that, he knew, could be easily concealed, could be held away from curious eyes for time uncounted.

"When my brother defeated the demon Onigumo, I was only a kid. I knew nothing of his battles and wars until I was older, until I began to train. I was always kept apart from the world because I was not like my brother or my father. I was born weaker, I am only half of what they are."

Kagome shook her head, "I don't understand. What do you mean, half?"

Inuyasha laughed sardonically, smirking at the irony of life. "Taisho is my half brother. I am only _half_ the being that he is. My mother was human, my father was a powerful, otherworldly being."

The girl stared at him, mouth agape. "I had no idea."

He shrugged. "How could you? Because I was not born a great and powerful son, my father deemed it necessary that I stay hidden and protected from the world. I do not belong with humans, and the other spirits and beings would see me as a threat, as an abomination. So, I was not much aware of the outside world, nor my brother's great reputation, his hold on his lands.

"I was in the background mostly, kept away from Taisho, except a rare few times when he trained me. My father died in battle when I was young and my mother died in a siege, so I was at the mercy of Taisho. Lucky for me, he was gifted with an intense sense of duty and he followed my father's last wishes and kept me safe.

"When I was older, I was moved to a small farming village in rural Japan. Taisho had many enemies after he defeated the demon, and many sought for a way to weaken him.

"I was the perfect way to do so.

"So, I lived in the little community of humble farmers and modest villagers, away from the wars and battles that Taisho fought. I was a secret, I was a weakness, and he and I both knew the best way to keep his lands strong was to not to show weakness.

"I didn't mind much, there was enough at the village to keep me content."

Dark hair and eyes, the soft touch of a loving hand.

"There was much," he breathed, correcting himself, "much to keep me content."

Kagome was silent, but he could see the churning of her eyes, and he looked away, afraid she would guess his only happiness, afraid she already knew.

"Not all of Taisho's enemies were allies of the demon. Some only wished to kill him, to wipe him from the earth, simply because he was a powerful being, because he held a monopoly and a sway over the land.

"But there were those that wished to seek revenge for their felled master, the demon, Onigumo, and they were the first to discover me. They used me, used those I trusted, convinced me of their supposed betrayal."

He was quiet, lost in the past, somber, reverent of his mistakes and stupid, idiotic foolishness. "There was one, one who I lost, one who they used so fully, they altered the person, the soul forever. They stole her spirit and used her against me, tried to kill me, tried to use me against my brother."

He turned his eyes back to Kagome, ashen in the flickering light. He grinned, baring sharpened teeth. "They didn't succeed of course. I lived, as did Taisho. Together we hunted down and killed the last of Onigumo's followers. But, by then, the secret was out. I was no longer hidden. Other enemies swarmed. Other, stronger, more clever enemies."

His story stuttered to halt, his vision tunneling as he remembered the men and the women of great power, the clans that descended after the last two men of their father's house.

"The hunters, the warriors," he murmured, staring into the memories of each face he had cut down with his sword. "They were mortal men and woman who sought to exploit our power, to trap us and use us, kill us if they wished. They were blood thirsty, they craved power above all else, elitists, perfectionists. They wished to blight our existence from the earth.

"They wished to end us. All of us. All of the spirits, demons, beings.

"They were sorcerers, mages, wizards, necromancers, seers. They were a band of men and women who would stop at nothing to gain power. To gain _more_ power. They believed that it was their right, that the age of spirits was over, that the future belonged to man, men with magic and the ability to use it.

"Where the monks here exist for peace and calm, the hunters banded together for the love of destruction. Rarely did they attack their own kind, even if they were pitted against one another. They believed all magical men were brothers, and that all nonhumans should be exterminated.

"They came after us in force specifically Taisho. I suppose they thought if they ended him, all other creatures would give up their struggle, would submit willingly to their deaths. It wasn't to be so. But, after I was found out…" He trailed off, lost in the heavy echo of battle, old magical shadows clouding his mind and his heart.

He met Kagome's eyes, smiling bitterly, ice and flame rooting behind benign regret. "After I was found out they came after me, too. They never succeeded though. There were times they almost did, times we were outnumbered, times we should have lost."

He laughed harshly, the sound sharp and real, frightening away the recollections. "We succeeded in nearly ending their brotherhood. I went into hiding, away from the magical world, where the humans were, and there I stayed, safe, or, safer, than I would have been had I stayed with my brother. They never would have won," he stated with forceful conviction, "They were never so single minded as Taisho. That is every one of his enemy's downfalls. They are not cool, not calculated. They were not born and bred as flawless killers. They were not made for perfection."

A small laugh brought him up short, and he looked over at Kagome, smiling skeptically, a strange knowing look in her eye.

"No one is perfect, Ash. Not even Taisho. He may be well suited-" she paused, thinking, carefully selecting the right words, "He may be the best and greatest warrior the earth has ever seen, but he is not prefect. He can fail as easily as anyone, and that," she smiled again, though, there was a sadness in the gesture, a poignancy that painted her vaguely beautiful, "that is why he is so untouchable. Because he won't fail, even with his flaws."

Inuyasha stared at her, as if he were seeing her for the first time, as if she were a mystery he would never understand. And in the cloudy shadows of a stormy day, he smiled; feeling a kinship with her, unlike that he had felt with any other before.

They were very much alike, the two of them.

He blinked at revelation, wondering how in the entirety of the world, two people could be so alike and meet on a fated path that had little, if nothing to do with their own, unsteady relationship. He resisted the urge to laugh and clap Fate on the back, to shake his head and exclaim, 'You got me good, Destiny!'

It was all too simply perfect, their lives and their slowly intertwining paths.

"How is it," he asked slowly, in hushed awe, "that you have only just met him, and yet you know him better than I?"

Kagome held his gaze, paused in the moment. "I don't know him better than you. I was just born with incredible insight."

He caught the upward twitch of her lips, the vacant sarcasm chasing the edges of her serious tone. "Don't lie," he chastised, "it's unbecoming."

"This from the man who so rudely assumed me a maid."

He sat up and raked his fingers through his hair. "Maybe it would be best not to argue about manners."

She rolled onto her back, her dark hair spread out around her, long tendrils as waves of night. "Perhaps. Or, you could add it to your list of diverting interests; place it directly under 'killing demons'. I'm told its quite absorbing, all the rage in some parts of the world."

He smirked, leveling her a smug expression, "What is? Arguing?"

She plucked absently at a strand of hair, eyeing it with distaste. "Of course."

"It might be better if we channel that energy into something productive, for instance, the learning of swordplay. Or," he added mischievously, "how to correctly hold a sword."

"But," he said, before she could protest, "we'll do that later. Hungry?"

She shook her head and sat up, looking decidedly disheveled with her hair all a mess. "No. I think I'll stay here for awhile."

He shrugged and turned to leave, padding across the floor. When he reached the open doors leading to the outlying hallways, he stalled and turned, catching her in the corner of his eye.

"Kagome?"

She looked up.

"Thank you."

A small smile, real and complete, traveled the distance between them, solidifying some new, nameless bond, one he would not have tried to define if given half the chance.

He left before it faded, that tiny, simplistic gesture, before the moment was lost, before he forgot what it was like to live in the present, before he let go of hope and was lost in the darkness of revenge.

* * *

Sesshoumaru found the howl of the wind to be quite offensive to his overly developed and sensitive ears. Even through the low murmurings of the monastery, he could hear the high, grating timbre of the wintry gale. The mountain rumbled with the crack of ice and snow, breaking from the high peaks, unable to withstand the insistent clawing of the stormy winds.

It distracted him, the churning of the weather, the whine of the wind. It was difficult to think through. It made his power crackle and him along his skin; an unconscious barrier forming around his person, each time his attention wavered.

He sighed away his misgivings, turning his eyes away from the large, ornate window of the small room he had occupied for the duration of his uneventful day.

There was not much to do in the place, with the Mage secluded, studying, searching, doing whatever it was that he did. He could find little, if anything to occupy his mind in the long hours of the day. There was only so much swordplay, so much conditioning he could take, and really, he needed very little practice, as he was in excellent form, had never once lost his edge in battle.

While Sesshoumaru was perfectly adept at waiting, at biding his time, he had never once been happy to do so. Patience he was known for and impatience he was prone to, albeit silently, in the secret, quiet corners of his mind.

He tapped his long fingers against the rough mat of the floor; his other digits occupied with a dust free, but disintegrating book, something he had absently plucked from the dilapidated, grubby, disorderly shelves of the monastery library.

In truth, he had no idea what he was reading, as he was perfectly happy to be impatient, and found it much more interesting than the archaic, dated language that stared back at him from yellowing pages.

He lifted his eyes from the words that had _not_ distracted him from his thoughts, all of which seemed to, at that bored and colorless moment, center around a very interesting and bright museum assistant, who, undoubtedly, at that moment, was striking her sword across the backs of his brother's knee caps.

Because Sesshoumaru never had enough moments to watch his brother fall, quite literally, on his face, he snapped the book he had not been reading, closed, and rose, striding out of his room, his destination the dojo, his amusement the Protector of his sword.

He did not stop to question why, of all things, Kagome would be at the forefront of his trivial and rare amusements, but, regardless of the reasons, she was, and he was not to be deterred from the staunching the numbing nothingness that the rest of his day threatened to become.

She, at least, would speak, would provide some distraction from the looming shadows of their enemies, from the impossible stubbornness of a devilish holy man, from fate, from whatever else an accidental savior of the world worried about in the long, straining hours of a single day.

He wandered along the long hallways, only faintly perturbed that his musings would lead him away from his perfectly adequate solitude. But then, he reasoned amiably, since the unskillful, accident-prone museum assistant had run into him, since he had sought her out, he had been curiously devoid of his lonesome lifestyle, his solitary ways.

In the most recent of days, when he was given time to himself, it was almost odd, the thick silence, the lack of questions, the absence of curious green eyes. He had grown to understand her curiosity, her interest in the world, had welcomed her hesitant admittance of her private thoughts, was becoming adept at working his way in between her skin and her soul, and was, much to the dismay of his inner warlord, becoming increasingly attuned to her unfathomable ability to rifle his feathers.

In short, he was accustomed to her and did not like it when their pattern of easy banter and newfound trust was thrown off its steady, strengthening foundation.

And that, he assured himself, that, and her unfounded ability to amuse him with her witty repertoire of words and musings, was the reason he _liked_ to be around her. It was nothing, really, as he knew and had admitted from the moment he met her that he did in fact, like her very much. So, really, it was nothing to want to be near someone who caused such feelings of affable, detached interest.

He liked Kagome well enough and did not mind when she was near. And sometimes, this steady, understated interest meant he needed to seek her out.

It seemed only fair, as on more than one occasion, she had been the one to find him, to initiate a slow their often-confusing interactions.

And yet, he frowned as he ascended a set of stairs in the back of a nondescript hallway, why did it feel as if he were convincing the darker side of himself? That he was forestalling an inner argument? And why, why in the fiery blazes of hell, did he not care more, that part of him would undoubtedly argue the merit of such thoughts and admitted feelings?

Around him, the low fires inside the hanging lanterns flit back in forth, sending double images of his shadow across the floor, spreading him wide, an illusion of many warriors in the shadows.

He sighed, feeling a headache worm its way behind his eyes and take root right where his thoughts had been.

Clearly, he was in no mood to further dissect the path his feet had taken, a direct course that would, somehow, he knew, lead him directly into a small sort of disaster.

For a brief second, he thought he could see the future at the end of the hallway he walked, and there, where the shadows were dispelled by a warm orange glow, he saw the supposed past repeating itself in the future.

And suddenly, he was very worried about his inner musings.

He quickened his pace though, despite the lead drop in his stomach, and passed the place where his vision had channeled forward and backward, stepping out into the hallway before the dojo, feeling as if he had only just passed through aching ghosts of memory.

At the far end of the hallway, the doors of the dojo opened, and Inuyasha slipped out, pausing at the door, turning back, his head bowed, murmuring something to the inhabitants inside.

Sesshoumaru, lost in his own thoughts, did not catch the whispered words, but did see the look on his brother's face.

It was as if he had lost his world and found it again. There was a flicker of hope behind his warm amber eyes, newly discovered, an epiphany.

When the younger Taisho brother closed the door, he looked up, catching sight of Sesshoumaru, striding down the hall with purpose, head high, eyes hardened, over compensating, trying to hide his most recent thoughts from a brother who was, at times, far too perceptive for his liking.

They met halfway down the hallway, eyeing each other with veiled curiosity.

"Where is Kagome?"

Inuyasha slipped his hands in his pockets and nodded his head back to the dojo doors, ominous at the end of the hall.

"What is she doing?"

"Daydreaming." There was a vague hint of a smile on his lips, his eyes a little brighter than they had been the day before.

Sesshoumaru looked past his brother and toward the dark hues of the doors, purple in the shadows of the hallway.

Without another word, he strode forward and Inuyasha laughed lightly, the sound carried upwards by its own buoyant tone, and he continued on, disappearing out of the hall as Sesshoumaru met with the doors of the dojo.

Gently, almost cautiously, he pushed open the doors, peering inside the impeccable white and cream, colorless, bland hues of the room. He stepped inside and his eyes immediately fell on Kagome, wrapped in vibrant green, situated against a window, her hands placed on the glass, her forehead resting against its cool, fogging surface.

He did not speak, did not immediately call attention to himself, and rather, stood, watching her, recalling all that had happened since first they met.

It seemed strange to him that the lonely, nearly meek assistant who had worn the uncomfortable pointy shoes, had apologized so profusely, had scurried away from an overbearing museum director, should be standing in a dojo, on the roof of the world, admitting her faults and flaws, brandishing a sword, perhaps the very key to salvation.

What a strange sense of humor fate had. Twisted, really.

His eyes darted up her frame, bright and surprising against the calm color of the room, the white flurry outside.

There was a tranquility to her, she was calm, much more so than he had seen her before. It was not just in that moment either. No, he had watched, as he always did, the slow transformation from fiery young girl to… well, to whatever she was standing against the window.

He did not know what she was, she did not know what she was, and it was certain that if the mage knew what she was, he was not telling anyone.

Sesshoumaru frowned, searching for an apt word, searching for a way to remember her in that moment, at the edge of something absolute and awe-inspiring.

Kagome.

She turned, sensing his gaze, and smiled.

Just Kagome.

_That_ seemed to fit her well.

_Just_ Kagome.

He felt his lips move, as they were so prone to do in her presence, and silently, against the howl of the wind, lost to the back of his mind, he took a step forward.

* * *

Aeron turned off his television, thoroughly depressed after watching the mayhem reported on the late night news. He rose from his couch, stretched, and flipped off the lights of his tiny living room.

Trudging down the short hallway to his bedroom, he trailed a hand along the wall, feeling the rough scratch of the wallpaper bite at his fingertips. Stumbling into his room, he removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, clumsily dropping them on his dresser before falling into bed, crawling between the sheets, and almost immediately falling asleep.

In the tenuous place between the wakeful world and the lovely, lofty one of dreams, Aeron found himself in a dark corner, the smell of dust and candle wax overpowering.

He turned, searching for a way out of the pitch black he was immersed in. At the edge of his vision, the dark receded, leaving blurry, faded colors in its wake. He squinted, and stepped forward, following the bleeding line of light until he stepped out into a hazy world of white and grey.

He blinked, confused.

He could see nothing except the steady movement of the heavy ivory fall, almost vaporous, as if part were solid and part was untouchable, like the clouds.

He looked down and his eyes widened.

He was standing on the edge of something. Something tall and high, something towering, soaring above the depths of white below.

He could see, in the instantaneous breaks in the white vaporous bleached surroundings, the hint of buildings below, red, black, flashes of color. But the moments were fleeting, the colorless haze far too intense to see through.

He stood, transfixed with the quick moving haze, the edge he was so perilously perched upon, and the knowledge that he was most definitely not in his bedroom.

A shiver traveled up along his spine.

There was a presence behind him, but how he knew, he was unsure. Turning, he looked over his shoulder, and through the blustery wall of white, a dark shape began to form, plodding, as though being held back by a great force.

When the figure appeared, squinting, holding his robes around his person, head down, staggering, the entire scene sharpened, forcibly focusing.

He stood in the middle of a snowstorm, in the middle of a towering room, enormous red pillars flanking him left and right, soaring to the heights of the roof. Through the torrential snow, he could make out the walkway that the dark figure of the man had crossed, leading the giant shadow of a building, hidden by the intensity of the storm.

The man looked up, wincing as the ice and snow swept past his face. His eyes widened infinitesimally as they landed on Aeron, surprise and bewilderment written into the deep lines of his forehead, the dying light of his eyes. He dropped his arms away from his face, the bracelets around his forearms falling about his wrists as gravity pulled them downward, glistening despite through the haze of the snow.

The two men stared at one another, as if neither believed the other was real, and then, the man, the one who had intruded on Aeron's wandering thoughts and then burst into his dreams, smiled, as he had in the library, the first time he had been seen, raised his hand, and tipped the world upside down.

Aeron flailed, knocked off balance by some unseen force, and then, he slipped off the edge of the room he stood, falling, as if in slow motion, over the edge, and into his bed, the screaming alarm clock buzzing in his ear.

He sat up, running a hand over his chest, assuring himself that he was alive, and then lay back down, running a trembling hand through his sweat soaked hair, breathing deeply, lost, frightened, wondering if he had recently gone insane without his knowledge.

The clock next to his bedside continued to interrupt the early morning, but the man found he did not much care, and lay in bed, drowning in his worries, his hopes, his foolish belief that there was more to life than there seemed.

* * *

Kagome bent at the waist, peering at the rack of weapons gleaming menacingly against the inconsistent light of the dojo. Her eyes narrowed as she sidestepped, slowly taking in each point, each spike, each intricate lacing of leatherwork, each bright edge, the shine of battle nearly blinding her. She pursed her lips, her finger itching to reach out and run a curious hand across the weapons, many of which she had never seen and could give no name to.

She hesitated, her hand pausing above a particularly beautiful silver long sword, of the European style, effortless and easy, simple. The sword gleamed good-naturedly, as if calling out how wonderful it was, shinning out against the other weapons.

She cocked her head and scowled. "I already have a sword, there's no need to show off."

He hand brushed past its sharp edges, the skin nicking, drawing the barest amounts of blood, a slim trickle down the outside of her palm.

Her hand fastened around a leather belt and scabbard, used, discolored, but otherwise perfect for her use. She gently disentangled the weapon from its casing, frowning as it become further tangled with the surrounding weapons.

Impatient, she wrenched the leather belt and its scabbard from its puzzling knot, pulling back her arm, yanking severely…succeeding in bringing down an entire group of weapons, pooling about her feet.

She sighed and closed her eyes letting her head fall backwards, face towards the ceiling, silently cursing the fates that she should be born so impatient, so infinitely clumsy.

Tossing the leather belt and its metal sheath aside, she kneeled and began the odious task of re-shelving the weapons. This turned out to be more difficult than she could ever have imagined as some of the objects were sharp and pointy in places she had not figured they would be, and by the time she had situated every last weapon in its proper place, her hands were nicked and raw, several cuts bleeding freely.

"Damn it to the fiery depths of hell!"

Wincing, she pressed her palms to her thighs, groaning as the fabric rustled, chafing along her sore hands. She looked around for something to bind her hands with, and seeing nothing, settled for a way to lessen the pain. She made her way over to the large rounded window against the southern wall and gingerly placed her palms against the pane of glass and weeping condensation.

She sighed at the sensation, relaxing as the combination of pressure and cold soothed away the slight pain of the scratches on her hands.

Tired, feeling as if the day had drained her with little effort and much pleasure, she leaned her head against the cool glass and watched the storm scream its rage on the outside buildings. Flapping in the wind, futilely holding their own, were the prayer flags she had so admired on their first day within the monastery. They were vibrant still, even with the heavy snow and wind, obscuring most of her vision, but there, when they moved with the howling winds, she could catch vague glimpses of them, fluttering an enthralling dance.

She stared out the window, lost in thought, and it was not until she heard the whisper of the door, the soft fall of a footstep that she turned.

Taisho watched her from the middle of the dojo, a blank slate, unreadable. She smiled, amused.

He never failed to revert to his stoic, guarded ways. Some days it felt as if she had to start all over again, had to find a new way around the invisible walls he was so adept at constructing.

But, then, she admitted, as a slow, nearly invisible smile crawled across the corners of his face and into his eyes, not all days were made for building walls, some were made for breaking them.

He walked toward her, brow furrowing, just enough to create a fine crease between his eyebrows.

"What are you doing here?"

She snorted, casting a guilty glance at the rack of weapons she had so rudely dumped on the floor. "Ruining things in the best way possible."

Taisho glanced at the weapons, his confusion arching in time with his eyebrow, rising infinitesimally.

She shook her head and pulled her hands off the cool glass, pointing to the leather belt and scabbard. "I was trying to find a better sheath for my sword and in the process, I made a mess of things." She held her hands up before his eyes, wry, embarrassed. "I, er… I knocked over everything and then succeeded in injuring myself again."

Taisho's laugh was low and hushed. He raised a glowing fingertip, trailing it along her hands, healing them quickly, without a thought. And before she could assure him that she was well and he did not need to heal her, he had finished, and had taken her hands into his own, inspecting his work, a cool, curious fingertip trailing along the creases of her palm.

She stared at the movement of the long finger; mind lost as his light touch dragged slow moving shivers along the length of her spine.

"Perhaps," he said, staring down at her, mirth barely contained, "you should stay away from sharp, potentially dangerous items."

"Then learning the ways of the sword would be a out of the question," she answered.

"Precisely."

She glanced back down at his wandering finger, tracing invisible patterns in her skin. "What if I want to learn the sword?"

"What if you impale yourself?" He countered.

She shrugged, stifling a shiver that threatened to engulf her. "And therein lies the benefits of being protected by a man who can heal."

Taisho's finger paused, hovering just above the sensitive skin of the middle of her palm, his eyes flickering strangely. "You would risk your life to learn?" He sounded incredulous to her ears.

"That's a little dramatic don't you think? Besides, Ash said that there was not much he could teach me short of basic defense. I don't plan on falling on my sword unless he decides to teach me complicated steps and methods. That is," she said, glancing down at her long robes, trailing to the floor, "if I don't trip over these long, impossible garments. I'm sure that would do the trick."

"The trick of killing you?" She nodded up into his face. "Let us not give them the opportunity then. Be wary of your garments lest they attempt foul play."

Kagome laughed and reclaimed her hand, balling it into a fist, attempting to staunch the tingling sensations running ghosted patterns over all the places his finger had trailed.

"If we need to worry about my death at the hand of clothing, I think you may have your work cut out for you. You can't protect me from everything, and this fight," she gestured to the edge of her green robe, "will be one war I must win on my own."

Taisho smirked down at her, "If it can be won." He turned his head, eyes focusing on the sword and new scabbard, lying on the floor. "Show me the sword you have chosen to use."

Kagome hesitated, wondering how he would react to the battered weapon she had claimed as her own. Striding over to it, she scooped it up and returned to him, her step full of false pride and confidence. Gently, she laid the damaged weapon in his open, upturned hands.

His eyes ran across it, appraising, pausing at each mar, each nick, each flaw, before turning the blade over and sweeping knowledgeable eyes across its once smooth flat.

When he looked up at her, she thought she saw the barest glimmer of surprise and esteem, a kindling of understanding, hidden well, behind his mask.

She looked away and down at the sword cradled in his curled fingers, "I know its not wonderful, or prefect, but I think that it will-"

"It will do." He interrupted, voice smooth and low, almost comforting, just shy of reassuring.

"Ash said-"

His lips curled into a ruthless smile. "You doubt me?"

Kagome was surprised into silence.

It was a simple question.

But, she knew, _oh_, she knew far too well, that each word was weighted, and his question, her _answer_ meant much more than a surface, superficial conversation about an abused sword.

It meant very much more.

She drew in a slow breath, wondering if this was yet another way for him to assess her trust, to define their strange, unfathomable relationship.

"No, I do not doubt you," she answered steadily, meeting his eyes.

She stared up into his face, eyes darting back and forth, trying to read the unreadable, wishing she could reach up again and brush her fingers across his cheek, that maybe such a simple action would explain him to her. Briefly, his eyes flickered, intense and piercing, gauging her.

And then he was looking down, examining her sword once again. "It is imperfect, it has been well used and well worn. But it is well made. It will not fail you now."

She reached out and ran a finger along the flat of the blade, smiling as her fingers caught along the broken edges. "There is something familiar about it isn't there?" She mused aloud, leaning down over the blade, fond warmth welling in her chest.

Taisho lowered the blade and Kagome stepped back from him as he gave an experimental thrust with the blade.

"Yes," he murmured, "it will do." He turned back toward Kagome. "Where is its sheath?"

She trotted over to where she had dropped the scabbard. Puling it off the floor she held it before his eyes. He studied it for a moment before handing her the sword and taking the smooth leather belt into his hands. Carefully, he turned it over, his eyes sweeping across the discolored hues, examining each sport where the strap and scabbard where weak.

"This," Taisho said, gesturing to the belt and scabbard, "will not do."

Kagome fidgeted nervously, gripping the cool hilt of her sword, drawing it closer to her, a sharp, deadly comfort. "It won't?" She asked worriedly, hands twisting arounf the hilt of the blade.

"No." He withdrew the sword from her hand and sheathed it, throwing the belt and scabbard over his forearm, offering her his free hand to her.

Her hand slipped into his, and she stared up at him in confusion. "Where are we going?"

He thought for a moment, considering, his face betraying nothing. "Outfitting you. If you are to learn the sword you must be properly equipped. Do you object?"

Kagome shook her head, trying to hide the pleased smile that threatened to spread across her face. "Far be it for me to tell a warlord how to dress a poor excuse for a warrior."

"Not a poor excuse. Merely unskilled," he responded, opening the dojo doors for her.

Kagome felt the careful compliment burrow past her reserve and tap her soundly on her woebegone heart.

It was then, as he led her down the empty hallways of the monastery, that she realized he had not asked her _why_ she chosen a battered sword as her weapon, had merely voiced his understanding of that choice. And again, as epiphany often went, understanding flooded her mind and boxed out all other thought, and she looked at him with steady eyes, once again aware that, he, like no one else, understood her strange whims, her metaphors, her hopeless hopes and pretty thoughts, her love of dangerous beauty.

Gold met emerald, and Kagome saw nothing but stunning ruin, exquisite before her eyes.


	27. The Blacksmith

**Chapter 27**

**The Blacksmith**

Sesshoumaru was, in all honesty, quite surprised that a peaceful place such as a monastery would house a smithy, hidden and cloistered, off some odd end of the giant inner working of prayer and peace. It was a shadowed place, as if, really, all of the men above the ground floor distained the idea of metalworking that wrought blades.

Sesshoumaru was not a fool, though; he could see this was nearer to the truth than any one of them cared to admit.

He saw the thinly veiled looks of disgust, could smell their nerves and their fears and their nightmares, knew that inside their peaceful prayers and mantras, the monks hated him. They hated him for disturbing their solitude, for bringing a woman amongst their ranks, for, as they thought, so foolishly leading a demon up their ancient trail.

He knew because he had once ruled a kingdom and had always hated surprises. Especially surprises that came in the form of blades and spears, armor and fire, caustic, astringent blood and bone. Yes, he thirsted for battle, but he, as with everything, could only find enjoyment in it when it was on his terms, no one else's. But rarely was a warlord ever given such a treat.

He had ruled by force, he had ruled with cunning, cold, swift accuracy, and he had ruled by war. And war was a tricky business.

And he had brought that dusty, bloody war to the footstep of a mountain, a mountain that housed powerful, peaceful men.

And while Sesshoumaru knew the hearts of warriors, he knew the hearts of simple men just as well.

There was no unselfish man; there was no man who could claim peace. He saw it in their eyes when he passed them on the stairs, saw it in the way they cast their glances over Kagome as she past by, lost in her own world, oblivious to the lust of men, their sorrow, their regret, their wishes that they had not made those vows, the promises to give up the drink, the women, the war.

He saw it and he knew, far too well, that men, even the holiest of those, were nothing but promises waiting to be broken.

Even the Mage, the monk, the humble laughing man, was a failure.

He had accepted them. Sesshoumaru, Inuyasha, and Kagome, had saved them, had sent a humble servant down a mountain and had broken his sworn oath to peace. And he would be leaving his quiet, façade, his empty, holy home, to cut and kill as he had once done, and had sworn never to do again.

But even with his innate knowledge of men, and males in general, Sesshoumaru was still mildly bewildered at the presence of the small forge, the anvil, the hammer, and a man who could aptly outfit a warrior.

It stood in the corner of the courtyard, the farthest and darkest, backed up against the protective walls, far from the entrance gates they had passed through when they first arrived, dilapidated and forgotten, even with the hushed sounds of metal against metal, the soft hiss of hot iron against water.

The snow, airborne on the winds, whirled outside; pushing its way through the cracks of the warped door he stood against, bent with age and the constant barrage of the elements. Tiny ice crystals formed against the cracks, the grey light filtering in from all sides, the boards cracked and flimsy, a pathetic excuse for a smithy.

The small, leaning hut was dark, its depth deceptive, the deep shadows pocketing, cloistering in corners. Even the warmth, the red-orange glow of the small forges, the kindling fires did not dispel the secrets of the rooms, vague and mysterious in the strange, sad, cold day.

Sesshoumaru crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door, ignoring the cold draft that tickled his skin through his white robes. His eyes were adept enough to see the edges of the room, despite the darkness, though, he knew Kagome possessed nonesuch ability, and motioned for her to wait before stepping further inside the forge.

She waited; tense, unconsciously moving closer to his stoic, silent power, his steady unafraid, undaunted person.

In the dark, backlight by the rising flames, a shadow moved, peering at them with curious, bewildered eyes.

The blacksmith blinked away the fading light and dust, maneuvering between his tables and anvils, his tools of the trade, scattered about absently, with little or no care. His feet made the barest of sound on the straw covered floor, grit from many workings rubbing into the soft heels of his leather boots.

The craftsman wiped his hands on his apron, emerging out of the shadow like the moon before the nightfall, eyes glittering with apprehensive interest. He was half hidden, even as he broke through the dark, even as he stepped into the white, snow-doused light, leaking through the cracks of the swollen wooden room. The hollows of his face were lined, and in the moment he stood before the warlord and the girl he was like a ghost of a past, coloring Sesshoumaru's memory red.

The man blinked at them and stepped further into the light. The shadows fell away from him and he was nothing but a young man, anxious to their eyes.

He looked from Sesshoumaru to Kagome and back again, as if they were from a dream; as if he could not fathom any person setting foot in his dark little room where he crafted with his hands.

Kagome shifted, and glanced up at him, asking a question with her eyes, unsure.

In turn, Sesshoumaru eyed the blacksmith, making a quick assessment of any threats the man might pose to them. His hesitancy was dispelled a moment later when the blacksmith's eyes slid to Kagome, and he smiled, attention then trailing to the worn sword in her hands, the well-used leather working of the borrowed belt and scabbard across Sesshoumaru's arm.

"I do not often have visitors down here in my little workshop," the man intoned blandly.

Kagome looked back at Sesshoumaru, her face drawn blank. Before he could open his mouth to interpret, the man spoke, studying Kagome intensely, leaning forward as his eyes adjusted to contrast between the shadows and the light.

"You came here for metal working, yes?" When the blacksmith saw the girl frown in contemplation, he shook his head, a gentle smile working its way over his sweat stained face. "No one ever comes here."

"Why would a monastery keep a blacksmith at the ready?" Sesshoumaru wondered aloud, eyes trailing to the glistening weapons lining the walls. "Moreover," he returned his wandering eyes to the tall man before him, "why would they keep one who designs weapons?"

The man shrugged and removed his heavy gloves from his hands, tossing them onto a nearby table, running his fingers through his coarse, dark hair, shifting his eyes away from the warlord king. "They have no need for a man who makes weapons. But I am also of use for other, smaller tasks. Small and rare," he added, untying the apron from around his neck. "And, admittedly, I do not know what the Lord of the Western Lands would want with a mediocre forger such as myself."

"You know of me?"

Beside him, Kagome had stilled, her eyes darting between the two men, fingers gripping the hilt of the blade, knuckles turning white.

The blacksmith leaned his weight against a rickety stool, wiping the sweat from his brow, continuing to avoid the intense eyes of the warrior.

"Yes, I do. But, that perhaps, is a story for another time. You came here for a reason, of that I am sure. How may I be of assistance? Work on the sword perhaps?" He nodded at the blade in Kagome's grasp.

Sesshoumaru shook his head and gestured to the belt and scabbard in his hand. "The blade is satisfactory enough, for its purpose. The belt and scabbard are not to my liking. They must be more secure."

He extended his arm and the young man took the offered items, eyeing them with interest. He glanced back at Kagome, eyes narrowing as he examined the sword.

"May I see the blade?"

Silently, Kagome offered it forward, her hesitation noticed by Sesshoumaru and ignored by the forger. With deft hands he studied the blade, weighing it, measuring it, examining it with his eyes.

He looked up at the girl and smiled. "I see why you chose it. It will serve you well," his dark gaze darted to Sesshoumaru, a hint of a knowing smile flashing against the light of the fires, "for its purpose."

He handed her back her chosen blade and turned back to his workshop, gently placing the leather belt and its sheath on the table with his apron and gloves.

"I will make you a new scabbard, one that will be both durable and trustworthy. I have several belts that will suit the weapon and the sheath. They will be light and usable, perfect for a first time warrior."

He faced them again, and his gaze landed on Kagome, a strange fond light igniting in secret, quiet places.

The young woman shifted, resting the sword tip against the ground floor. "Is something wrong?" She asked, her voice lifting in nervous uncertainty.

A half smile curved his lips upward and to Sesshoumaru, who had many times outrun his past, had forgotten lifetimes, thought it seemed as if the man was recollecting forgotten times, memories that were not his own, but tied to him nonetheless.

"No, I did not mean to stare," his voice was hushed, "You merely remind me of someone I once knew." Kagome nodded absently, speech evading her, and the man shook himself, jarring his attention away from the girl and back to the warrior in front of him. "I can have the items for you within two days."

Sesshoumaru looked askance at Kagome, who had hardly spoken, let alone moved since they had entered the smithy.

The fires of the forges painted her rose.

From the corner of his perceptive eye, he studied her profile, licked golden and pink with the calm glow of the embers. She appeared uneasy, but hesitantly curious about the man before them. In a moment where he allowed his thoughts to wander, he pictured her at a great height, looking down on a world she did not understand, trying, and failing to piece together the threads of all that was and should be.

She blinked and her dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks, inconsistent light the preventing her from blending into shadow. She was eerily beguiling in those brief moments he took to study her, all of her, all that was captivating and alluring.

The moment passed and he pulled his eyes away, nodded to the blacksmith, and moved to stand straight again, uncurling his arms from about his chest, hand already at the cold brass handle of the door.

He pushed open the door and the wind and snow blew in, cold and blustery, the ice and small flakes curling around the room, casting shimmering light to the heights of the rafters. Kagome cast a final glance at the man before slipping out into the cold, pulling her robes around her shivering body, waiting for Sesshoumaru to come to her.

The warrior hesitated, scrutinizing the blacksmith once more, his golden depths narrowing as his perception of the man skated along a high plane, hovering just above a concrete thought. For reasons he could not name, he felt as if, standing in the doorway between the fires and the cold gusts of snow, that fate was playing yet another hand, winding its way more surely around and through them, bringing them ever nearer to an untimely and bewildering end.

The blacksmith turned and disappeared into his home amongst the flames and metals, leaving Sesshoumaru with his dubious thoughts, his own lost ghosts, wandering along a snow kept mountain, soaring above them all, unmovable, unchanging, the only thing that never changed.

* * *

Through the blur of the white snow, Kagome could barely make out the dark, looming doors of the monastery entrance way. Blinking away the frozen tears that the gusty winds whipped from her eyes, she turned and glanced over her shoulder, hardly able to discern Taisho from against the ivory fall. He appeared, like a breath of wind, and without looking down at her, without halting his quick steps, reached for her arm, long fingers curling around her, tugging her with him, toward the warmth and relative safety of their temporary home.

When he had pushed her through the heavy, entrance doors he turned to look at her and she almost stepped back and away from him, unnerved by the look in his golden eyes.

"Do you know that man?"

"Who? The blacksmith?" Taisho merely stared down at her, looming above and over her, casting her in the dark, long lines of his shadow. "No, I have never seen him before in my life. Do _you_ know him?"

Taisho frowned, his lips thinning in his distaste. "No." He looked away from her and down the long, lantern lit hall, eyeing the men milling about in the shadows, walking quietly from one corner of their home to another.

"He seemed familiar to me, though," she added quietly, peering up at his pale complexion, scrutinizing the lovely curve of his nose and lips, the lengthening, soft hair.

A dark, twisted smile curved his lips and he glanced at her, catching her off guard, her breath hitching low in her chest.

"And to me as well."

Kagome blinked at his unexpected words, the strange, knowing smile on his face. "It seems odd that a man at the top of a mountain in Tibet would be familiar to me, doesn't it?"

His laugh curled like smoke, light and smooth, dark in all the right places. "It seems strange that a museum assistant would be at the top of a mountain, saving the world, no?"

Kagome shook her head and rolled her eyes. "Oh, that," absently, she waved her hand, "that's old hat by now."

"Then perhaps it is not so strange that a man you have never met may know who you are."

She tried to work away the wry smile clamoring to claim her lips. "I knew a man like that once. He ran into me in the middle of a museum hallway."

"Interesting. I have heard that tale before and in all versions, it was you who ran into the man."

"That's not the point," she countered.

"It is precisely the point. You were not looking for him. He appeared and he changed everything."

She shifted on her feet and transferred her sword to her left hand. "What are you saying? That fate and strange men who know me may have other things up their sleeves?"

Taisho lifted his chin, his expression superior, aloof, as cold and hard as a mountain face. "I am merely suggesting that stranger things have happened, much stranger things than a familiar blacksmith in a hidden forge on top of a mountain."

"Like demons sending their wind lackeys to kill us and drag us to the depths of hell."

Kagome watched as a slow, languid smile, a real smile, drew invisible lines in his eyes and down through his immaculate face, softening it for the glimmer of a moment. "That would be one such event, yes."

She shrugged. "I suppose this is more true than I would like to admit." She looked up at him again, a tired smile capturing her eyes and her lips. "Let's go. It is much too cold to stand in a hallway discussing such things."

He reached out for the sword and took it into his right hand, offering her his left arm, and together, they walked through the light of the flickering candles and the dark of the stretching shadows, linked carefully, in a fragile way, a hand upon an arm.

* * *

The sword glinted against the light, arcing toward her, blurry at its edges, slicing the air in two.

Kagome stumbled backward, raising her weapon, grasping it with both hands, grimacing as the two weapons clashed, the weight on her forearms splintering down along the bone, nearly wrenching the sword from her hand. She shifted her feet, digging her heels into the tatami mat beneath her, ignoring the prickling feeling of her skin as it ground down, burning, as she was pushed backwards.

Before her, Ash swiftly pulled back and raked his blade down, dragging her defensive move into a terrible fumble, unbalancing her, sending her forward, exposing the back of her neck to his attack.

She turned, and wrenched away from him, clumsily raising her blade.

Metal snaked forward and kissed her throat, the tip pressing gently against exposed skin.

Her eyes closed in angry resignation.

"Not bad," Ash intoned, a gentle edge to his normally dry, gritty, impatient voice.

"Not bad?" She dropped her blade tip to the ground and raised her forearm to her head, wiping away the sweat beads, trickling down her temples. "I'd be dead!"

Ash carefully pulled his sword away from her skin, drawing back a step. "Not really. Taisho and I would be there. You don't need to be a master, Kagome; you only need to know the very basics, enough to defend yourself if we cannot make it to you in the blink of an eye. Though," he added thoughtfully, "Taisho can move so quickly I don't know if that is even an issue."

Kagome sighed and bent over, her muscles screaming along the length of her spine. "I understand. I just don't want to be a hindrance."

She looked up when Ash did not speak. He was looking at her with an incredulous face, one dark eyebrow raised, disappearing into his hair.

"Don't give me that look. I was named the Protector of the sword, was I not? Isn't it my job to defend the blade, to keep it safe? How can I do that now with what little skills I _do_ possess? After all, I was named the Protector _before_ I began to learn the ways of the blade. Whoever thought I could take care of that weapon, safeguard it against demons, was sorely mistaken. I don't want to be this weight, an anchor that Taisho is carrying around, simply because he needs his blade. But," she admitted, brow drawing together as she looked toward the dojo windows where the snow still fell, white and blurry, ethereal, "I suppose I already am a hindrance."

Ash glared at her, his old, blunt, steadfast demeanor returning to his features, immediately darkening his face, his eyes blazing with an internal, fiery light.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself," he demanded gruffly.

Kagome laughed gently, amused by his rough attempt at reassurance. "I didn't mean it like that and you know it. I only mean that I should do whatever I can to learn a means to protect the sword. Why else would I be named Protector?"

Ash hoisted his blade high off the ground and threw it over his shoulder, working his head from side to side as he did, trying to release the pressure along his spine.

"There are other ways that you can and have protected it."

"Oh, I agree, but none of which I did consciously. For all we know, some great fate driven other force worked its will through me and I had little if anything to do with it. _This_," she gestured with her hand, pointing out their blades, shinning with a dull magnificence, even in the dismal nearly absent light of the dojo, "this is something I can do, by myself, consciously. I want to be good at it because I feel like I need to be. Because I can't seem to do anything else on my own."

Ash watched her for a moment before lowering his blade off of his shoulder and gracefully moving his long limbs until the tip of the deadly weapon was pointed at her, every muscle in his body pulled taut as he held his position, a dangerous feral gleam glistening in the dark of his irises.

"Then," he said quietly, "you have much to learn and little time to do it."

Kagome did not have time to smile before his blade arced through the air, a dark metal ray of death and destruction, as beautiful as anything she had ever seen.

* * *

The snow continued to fall; the winds were bitter and angry, howling about the corners of each angled wall, creeping into the cracks of the monastery. Sesshoumaru found himself sitting at the doors to his favorite place of solitude, his golden eyes staring out the crack in the door, watching as the snow attempted to fit its way into the tiny sliver of space that he had opened in the doorway.

He leaned against the cool wood of the wall, his arms thrown carelessly over his raised knees, his mind above and beyond, always hunting, searching, watching the various paths his life might lead him, ways his journey might end.

His dull, colorless, lifeless musings were brought to an abrupt halt when he sensed Kagome moving up the twisting stairs searching him out.

He turned just as she rounded the corner, her hands in front of her, feeling for the wall as her eyes adjusted to the dark shadows of the final hallway. She stopped short when she saw him, glistening against the black of the night.

They stared wordlessly at one another, neither offering an invitation to the other, but neither refusing to break their gaze, to turn from the other.

Finally, he saw Kagome lift her head, her fingers clenching around one another and she took a confident step toward him, one that faltered a moment later as she stumbled in the dark.

He could almost feel the blush radiating off her cheeks, coloring the shadows with an invisible sheen of hazy pink. She leaned against the wall next to him and slowly slid down the cool surface to sit beside him, folding her legs up to her chest, attempting to ward off the chill.

She sighed and propped her chin in her hand, staring at a darkened corner with detached interest.

"You know," she started conversationally, "when my mom died, I thought I might not make it into college. Well," she corrected, voice steady, even as he smelled the gathering salt water behind her eyes, " I thought I would get there and fail miserably. I didn't think I would have enough money, not after so much went toward medical bills, not when I had to pay for an apartment, not when I had a purebred dog to attend to.

"And then, when I saw there was enough money, I didn't think I'd have the mental state or the emotional wherewithal to carry on. I didn't think I would have the drive. But school started and all I wanted to do was think of something besides what had happened. That is why I finished school so quickly. I couldn't stand having enough time to think. "

She stretched her fingers out, away form her knee, and stared down at their pale glow, luminescent in the night. "Isn't it funny, I keep all that pain close even as I try to outrun it?"

She laughed a little, and he could hear her tears, dripping off every lilting cadence.

"How _do_ you let it go, Taisho?"

He stilled as the heavy question fell in between them, expanding like an ocean of truth and solitude, reminding him of years of guilty wandering, of the retribution he had yet to fully pay, he had yet to fully acknowledge. At one time in his life, he never would have apologized, never would have acknowledged a mistake, believed a wordless promise was honor bound.

But, he _had_ broken his promise, his word, had marred his honor, the honor of his father, had willingly given up his name as a partial penance, and there he was, sitting in the midst of yet another quest, one that could end as badly as the first.

He looked at Kagome, the next Protector, the one he silently vowed to keep safe and alive, the one he would make right by his mistakes, and thought back to how he had let go of the first one, the first young woman who had followed him, the first one who carried his sword.

And he thought, five hundred years was hardly enough time to let it all go.

"You find something else to hold onto, something better, something that will allow you to forget that which weighs you down."

She turned to look at him, twisting her dark hair behind her shoulder, fingers busy and shaking.

"Revenge is more productive?"

He laughed darkly. "More productive than wallowing in pity. More productive than spending a life pondering regret. If you do not let it go, it will swallow you whole. You must. It is that simple. You will or you will not and that will make all the difference."

He turned to meet her gaze and saw the worry fall across her face, heavier than the shadows in the hallway. "You _are_ seeking revenge."

Sesshoumaru frowned at her words. "I seek an end to what I failed to finish so long ago."

"An end for her."

In the empty corridor, in the quiet of the descending night, against the insistence of the wind, against the gaze of his enemies, Sesshoumaru Taisho nodded, admitting that which he could not speak, which he had never had the opportunity, the will, the desire to share with another.

He needed no words to convey the magnitude of this admission; he could hear her understanding in the straining calm of her breath, the sudden hammer of her heart.

They sat in the quiet until Kagome grew too cold, her limbs numb, and then he helped her to her feet, and in the strange, dark, twisted, hidden, cloistered parts of his head, his mind, and his heart, he saw his greatest fears play out and outside his mind, and his hand pulled the girl closer to him, lest the claws of his enemies come to snatch her from his protective grasp.

* * *

The warmth and dusty pleasant feeling of the monastery library had fled, replaced by a twisted, desperate hum of waning power, straining, dividing, rushing to the brink, plunging down and around in an endless unhappy spiral.

The Mage was bent over a large text, his power humming, the rings around his bracelets glowing, sparking with electricity every time he shifted.

He did not look up when Sesshoumaru entered the room, he did not say anything when the man hovered behind him, casting his long, lithe shadow across the words on the pages of his book.

His fingers kept moving, his eyes roved over the ancient words, his power flared, and he continued along whatever path he had headed down before the warrior stepped within the inner sanctums of the library.

"Mage." He called curtly, splitting the silence down the middle, frightening all the shadows away.

"What do you want? I told you it would take a fortnight, did I not?"

Sesshoumaru advanced on the table hands reaching out to flip through the scrolls and pages, eyes darting across the pages.

"And what do these things have to do with the Protector of my blade?" He gestured at the words, the ancient techniques, some of which he could read, others he could not, all lying strewn about in a hurried pile.

The mage looked up from his work, dark purple circles under his bloodshot eyes. "They have everything to do with her, Sesshoumaru. It could mean the difference between life and death. Do you wish for me to accomplish what I set out to do?" Sesshoumaru's muscles twitched, his hand tensing to wrench his sword from his side and swipe it across the man's chest. "Then leave me in peace." Seeing the furious glint in the warlord's eyes the man added, quietly, almost desperately, "Please, my friend, leave me in peace, let me do what I must, for my part of fate's plan."

Sesshoumaru turned from the table and stalked to the window, his back rigid as he fought to control his rising ire.

"There is a man in the smithy that is familiar to me, though I know I have never seen him before. Should I be surprised that he is here, by your wish?"

The holy man sighed and a small, tired smile grew over his face, momentarily lighting it, smoothing away the years and he battles.

"Should you be surprised that I would take care of one of our own?"

"_Our_?"

The bracelets tinkered together and another surge of power lit the air. "Yes, our. His father fought by our side, he is one of the reasons why that blade exists, why it still hangs by your side."

"I am fully aware of the Forger's actions in the events of the past. I do not require a lecture."

An impatient noise met his ears and the Mage shifted, standing up from his chair, stretching aching muscles and bones. "Then, I say again, you should not be surprised that I would take care of his son now that he is no longer able to do so."

"He is gone?"

"Several years now."

Sesshoumaru turned back to look at the monk, half hidden behind his books and the shadows. Absently, the warrior reached for a low burning candle and picked it up, lighting those that had burned out, a slow, steady glow beginning to fill the wall by which he stood.

"What is his name?"

An ironic, knowing smile glinted out from the depths of mystery. "You may ask him yourself, he would be honored, I am sure, should you inquire about him."

Sesshoumaru dipped the dripping taper down again, catching the wick of a burned out candle, holding the flame steady until it caught, a tiny flicker emerging from amongst the bubbled wax.

"And what if it is nothing more than history, a past that must be forgotten?"

The mage laughed, low and easy, "You do not forget the past. You take it and reshape it and remember it as it best fits you. But I know you, Honorable Sesshoumaru Taisho of the Western Lands. You do not forget duty, or fellowship, or the ways of a warrior. You have not forgotten your companions and you have not forgotten the past in which we all lived. That is why you keep the Protector close, why you are a different man from the warrior who overtook the west. You don't forget, you learn and you adapt so you can defeat your greatest enemy once and for all."

It was Sesshoumaru's turn to laugh. "You seem to think yourself a wise man after all these long years, Mage. Do not lie or assume that I am so easily amused by such pretty poetic words."

"They amuse you when they come from the right person, I am sure."

Golden eyes narrowed to slits, and white power trembled beneath a calm face. "Do not overstep your bounds. I would hate to think a wise man would do such a foolish thing as to assume."

The Mage bowed his head, stiffly, his eyes downcast. "Apologies. I did not mean to be short or to insinuate any one thing."

Sesshoumaru placed the slender, dripping candle back in its place amongst the rest of the tapers.

"I will not disturb you again. But I wish to have answers when the fortnight passes."

The Mage nodded his understanding and bowed differentially at the waist as Sesshoumaru passed.

"Of course."

Sesshoumaru disappeared out the door and left the Mage with his desperate search, each regal step taking him further away from an impossible puzzle, the all consuming fate nipping at his heels.

* * *

Kagome was growing very tired of her daily routine.

There was little to do but eat, practice with Ash, and eat again.

Of course, there were those rare moments in the evenings or at night when she stumbled upon Taisho and they spoke quiet secret words that neither really wanted to admit to every letting pass their lips.

She certainly found herself quite vulnerable when she had a decent amount of time to study exactly what she had said. Some days, she almost regretted speaking to him, but then the comforting understanding would descend upon her again and she would marvel at how a man like he, the stoic, ageless, bloody warlord could understand the tiny, tumultuous museum assistant like she.

But when it all came down to it, there had been no one _willing_ to listen to her since her parents had died. No one. He was the first and, he would, she believed, deep down inside, be the only one who would ever understand, would ever listen.

This might have been because she thought that she might die too soon, might perish as their quest processed on, or that once she had opened up to one person, she would never find the ability to do so with another, but whichever, or whatever the case may have been, Kagome was nearly certain that she could never find someone who could look at her so simply, with those haunting eyes of his, and see through her.

He could see through every damned wall she put up. And when he did that, there was no need to pretend, to hide.

He already knew and she had no more reason to hide.

She was thinking this, all of this, for perhaps, the hundredth time, as she descended the main staircase to the bottom floor where the draft of cold air seemed to originate, pooling against the bright mosaic of the circular entranceway to the monastery.

She pulled the long robes closer to her body and hurried past the holy men, keeping her head down, her eyes away from the monks.

She had begun to notice, although gradually, that the men regarded her with strange, lingering looks, as if they too knew who she was and what her purpose with the great warrior was. Some glances were curious, some were dark and brooding, some were powerful, leering, frightening, some were hateful, spiteful, as if they wished her death, wished they could carry out such a deed with nothing but their eyes.

Skirting the men ascending the stairs she hurried across the tiled floor and slipped out the huge wooden doors, and was immediately greeted by the cold, icy blast of the wind. She darted across the giant expanse of the courtyard and through the shadows and gusty blows of mountain air. Flitting through the shadows she ran toward the forge.

By the time she reached the large, rickety doors, she was almost blind from the icy snow.

Without thinking, with little to no hesitation, she pulled open the door and hurried inside. The winds followed her in and she whirled around to pull the doors closed, straining against the weight of it, her feet slipping against the dirt and the straw.

A pair of quick, strong hands appeared in her line of sight, above her own hands, easily drawing the door closed and cutting off the icy air from its insistent clawing grip.

Kagome turned and looked up into deep, dark, curious eyes.

"Hello," her vice sounded timid, she cleared her throat and spoke again, "I'm sorry to barge in, I would have knocked, but I didn't think you would have heard me over the gale."

The man smiled gently and drew back, leaving a polite space between them. "The interruption is a welcome one. As I said, I hardly ever have visitors to my forge. It is pleasant when I am drawn away from the fire and my metal working." He withdrew from the immediacy of the light, falling back into the shadows, his voice drifting back to her. "You have come for your belt and scabbard?"

Kagome glanced away from his darkened form, her eyes drifting upward and around, taking in the sight of the forge. Upon her first visit she had been enraptured with the place, the dusty magnificence of it. It seemed to her, standing ignorant of all things magical, in the midst of such a powerful place, that the tiny forge held an old story in its beams and air. She could not say for certain that this was so, but she did know she felt the way her skin tingled in the hot air, she could hear the way the fires crackled and leapt, as if trying to divulge their secrets, to beckon her forward and reveal all the things she did not know.

There was something there, in the tiny forgotten place, that made her wonder, that piqued her curiosity, that made her feel as if she were very close to the end of a mystery, as if she were another important player in something magnificent.

Perhaps, she thought, that was all magic was, spells and splendor, another kind of story.

And maybe, if that was so, she had seen more magic in her life than she had previously believed.

"Yes," she finally answered the man, her delayed answer dropping like a stone into a pond, the sound of her voice echoing outward like the ripples across the calm surface of water, "I have come for the belt and scabbard."

The man returned, and in his gloved hands he carried a dark cloth, the long bundle cradled carefully in his large hands. With great care and more grace than Kagome could admit ever having, he placed the parcel on a large wooden table and beckoned her forth.

She approached slowly, eyes immediately drawn to the dark fabric, the folds and that which was hidden within, a strange fascination creeping its way up her spine, dragging shivers behind it.

When she reached the table, the blacksmith gestured for her to uncover what he had made, what he had been asked to create.

With aching fingers, she reached, the soft cloth caressing the tired, jagged pads of her palms and fingertips. The air seemed to draw its breath in a hushed excited whisper; all the oxygen suddenly leaving Kagome's already tortured lungs.

She rolled back the cool, soft fabric to reveal a glistening metal scabbard attached to a beautifully crafted leather belt. Her hands moved over the items, sweeping across the beautiful craftsmanship, the simple magnificence of it all.

The scabbard was unadorned and basic, there were no markings or fantastic etched curves, but it was hers and it was exquisite.

It was _hers_.

For her.

For _her_ sword.

Well, that was not strictly correct.

It was for her borrowed sword.

But it _was_ hers, even if for a short time.

She grazed tentative fingers over the cool metal and the smooth leather, her eyes gliding upward to meet those of the blacksmith.

He waited, as hesitant as she; his dark eyes revealing his apprehension, his face lined with hope and worry.

She smiled, distantly reminded of her mother by the strange gentle soul before her.

"Are the items to your liking?"

Kagome looked back down at the sheath and belt a small warm wellspring of pride rising in her chest.

"They are lovely, thank you."

She could feel his tension seep out of his tall frame at her words, his breath exhaling silently, a light disturbance on the air.

"It was my pleasure. I am not often sought after for my skills." He reached, his hand moving across her line of sight. "The belt I already had. I am not proficient in leather working. I strengthened the metal straps and the bindings for the scabbard. It should fit your frame better than most belts. You are much smaller than the average outfitted warrior and this is as close to custom made as you will find here where you are." He shook his head, smile flashing white in the dark, "Unfortunately my skills are limited, I am not as accomplished as my predecessors. But," he continued, picking up the scabbard, he drew a long finger down its length, "It will suit your purpose I believe. The sheath is lighter, lighter than most scabbards would be. It will stay in place at your hip, or should you choose, over your back. If ever you were to re-forge the blade you now carry, this scabbard would still be an appropriate way to carry your blade. I hope it helps you in your quest."

He placed the scabbard back in he table, withdrawing his hands, movements slow and gentle, almost reverent.

Kagome glanced up at him, studying his features in the shadows and shifting light.

He was tall and lean, strong and muscular. But unlike Taisho or Ash, he had a natural quiet, gentle, grace to him. He was not a warrior, how she knew this, she was unsure, but she knew it to be true. His careful movements were not a product of practice and repetition, rather, it was if he thought before each breath, each tiny movement of his fingers, his toes, his hands, his arms, as if he were so conscientious he took a moment to think of the future consequences of every action.

Kagome had no doubt that he could handle a weapon, but something in the dark depths of his eyes told her that he hated to do so. He created with his hands, made art with his fingers and the vision in his mind. That the product happened to cut and kill was an unfortunate paradox, one that seemed to plague him, to shove him to the back of the monastery floor, alone and forgotten.

She was inexplicably reminded of the legend Taisho had told her, the story of the forger, the man who distained killing, a man who could never quite escape his warrior ways, his fated path in life.

"You knew who Taisho was," she blurted suddenly, startling herself out of deep thought. The man drew his chin upwards, eyes immediately veiled. She winced and shook her head. "I'm sorry, that was rude. I do not mean to pry into your life or your business. It's just that," she met his eyes and felt her face draw into a dark hard line of hazy thought, "I feel as if I know you. And I am very unsure how this could be so. Although," she added lightly, desperately trying to lighten the heavy weight that descended on her heart, "I have seen and experienced far stranger things in recent days, than a mild case of déjà vu. I was simply…reflecting."

The blacksmith watched her for a moment, his words gathering behind his eyes and trickling down to his soft-spoken mouth.

"I do know The Warlord of the Western Lands, though, it is not through personal experience. I have met many people who knew him once, when he ruled and vanquished a demon." The man paused, a stark, strained silence following his words. When he spoke again, his voice was hushed. "Some would say his enemy has returned. Some would say it is on the best interest of all that they assist the warlord in whatever ways they can, assist the Warlord and the Protector of his sword."

Kagome's breath hitched high in her throat and her heart leapt at his words.

She worked her lips to speak, but found no words capable of expressing the tumultuous emotions tumbling inside her head.

The man blinked down at her, his head cocked to the side, as if he had only just noticed something. "You are in mourning."

Kagome's hand flew to her chest, resting just above her heart, hammering wildly in her chest.

"How would you know such a thing?"

"Your eyes tell me so."

Her dark brows drew together and she stepped closer to him, peering at his face through the dark. He did not move, stood still before her intense scrutiny.

"And you would know grief because you feel it too," she answered slowly, words nothing but a breath of air buoying a thought upon the distance between them.

"Everyday."

It seemed ironic to her, that in that moment a smile would creep onto her face, a smile full of sorrow and hope and understanding and bittersweet memories. But crawl it did, across her lips and into her eyes, grey in the dark and the orange glow of the fires.

"Have you ever let it go?"

The man returned her smile, though really, it was nothing more than a memory, perhaps invisible, a figment of her imagination.

"No."

A quiet, dull pain wound down her chest and into her middle.

"Is that why you are here, alone in a forge, wrestling with your memories?"

"Yes."

She pulled her eyes away from his dark honesty, her hands reaching to enfold the belt and scabbard, rolling them back into their dark, protective cloth. She drew the items to her chest, preparing to step away from him, to leave him in his place of solitude.

"And why tell me this?"

There was a slow intake of breath, and on it, within it, through it; she heard his entire life, full of sadness and empty wandering.

"Because," he murmured, tired, weary, "one of us must survive and go on and let go all that brings us misery."

Kagome became very still. She was unable to breath, to blink, to think pas the words she dreaded to utter.

"And why would that be, that one of us must move on? How are our grief's the same, how are they intertwined?"

A small smile, knowing and mysterious, fond and gentle, lulled away her rising fears.

"All grief is intertwined. But you are the Protector and you must live and move on, because without you, we all are lost."

Kagome gripped the scabbard and belt closer to her chest, staring at him over the long tip of the covered sheath. He said nothing more and she could not bring herself to dive back into the frightening intimacy that he had so easily pulled her into.

She turned and walked across the dirt floor, reaching for the handle of the door, fingers closing around cool metal.

She paused, but did not turn.

"Thank you."

She opened the door and the snow swirled in.

Behind her, just as she slipped out the door, the man smiled and spoke, mystery shrouding him, walls surrounding him.

"Good luck to you, Protector of the blade."

And she was gone, wrapped in snow.


	28. Like Home

_As you know, we could have mixed up lots of things-_

_And it would have worked out fine._

_What's left to show has its place for all to see-_

_This is simply mine._

- Mice Parade, "Night Wave"

* * *

**Chapter 28 **

**Like Home**

"Where did you go?"

His voice was soft, but she heard the rising impatience, the nettled tone, the rifled authority that she so easily and accidentally managed to disturb.

"This afternoon?" She questioned back, feigning ignorance, shying away from the strict anger that he mastered so well.

When he did not answer she sighed and her shoulders lowered. She was not in the mood to play games with him, did not feel like making him work, making him climb over walls to find the things she kept so carefully locked away.

She felt the mischievous twinkle that resided in her eyes, melt away, and suddenly, she felt much, much older than she was. She wondered if she would ever find a happy medium between the quick fire museum assistant and the hesitant honest woman she so often found herself to be when in his presence.

Some days, at some moments, she felt as if she were pulled left and right, could not find herself amidst everything that was happening to her. She was not Kagome of the museum, but she was still a far and vacant cry from all knowing, graceful, warrior, perfect Kagome.

The in between always managed to find a way to grey itself.

And everything before her was grey that night, sitting in the hallway leading to the rooftop they had sat upon, the snow and ice howling outside the doors.

She looked up and met his eyes, shadowed, hooded, half hidden.

"I just went to collect my gear form the blacksmith. I was restless. I'm sorry. I should have looked for you first."

A light eyebrow rose, but the rebuke she had expected never came, and instead, her Protector blinked, all the dark angry pressure leaving him, his magic subsiding, the invisible tension seeping away into the air.

"Are the items adequate?"

Kagome shrugged. "They are simple. The belt fits well, it is secure, and the scabbard holds the sword well. I like them. I suppose that doesn't mean much, as I am not an authority on metal or leather working."

Taisho snorted and she could hear a snide little voice, his voice, floating out of the top of his head, agreeing with her, perhaps commenting that metal and leather working were not the only subjects she was not an authority on.

Too tired to rise up and meet his bait with her normal quick-witted response, she merely leaned back against the wall, tipped her head back, and stared at the ceiling, almost lost in black shadow.

There was a long pause before, next to her, the man who she had steadily grown accustomed to, the man who she found utterly mysterious, confounding, and altogether perfectly plausible, shifted and she could feel his eyes on her face.

"What troubles you?"

She smiled.

There, underneath her weary worry, she felt the old Kagome flare to life, and although weak and hesitant, her words bubbled upward and caught on her lips.

"Many things trouble me."

She _felt_ his irritation.

And she smiled again, continuing before he misunderstood her words as an invitation to bicker. "Many things trouble me, but I was thinking of one thing in particular."

Next to her, the man relaxed, and peace settled between them.

It was rather like a game, their strange, fluctuating relationship.

A very silly, poorly thought out game, as the rules were always changing and Kagome never felt she had the higher ground, the upper hand.

"What," he asked mildly, almost, oh, very nearly, archly, "in particular?"

Her amusement wavered and plummeted.

"I was thinking about the demon."

Taisho, unlike she, did not seem at all bothered by this subject, and rather than tense, rather than regard her with a sweep of his piercing eyes, he merely stretched, arching his neck backward, resting his head, much like she, against the wall, eyes upward.

"And?"

Kagome laughed then.

Sometimes, he was utterly surprising.

"Nothing. Just that."

The man's long legs shifted, and she watched them from the corner of her eye, stretched long in the hall. "That is hardly worth mentioning then."

She frowned, sensing his careless prod, his bored, uninterested way of pushing her over the edge, leading her down paths he could follow, paths he could use to walk around her, inside, her, through her.

He was becoming very good at getting what he wanted from her.

Well, she admitted sourly, he had always done that.

But this, this was different.

He knew how to make her wonder aloud, how to goad her into sharing her very, very deep thoughts.

If they had sat in that hallway a month earlier, she would have introduced the man responsible for her ravings to her most violent and brutal temper. But, she wasn't angry, or bothered, not really.

She simply took note of his ability to wheedle. He did it so well, after all.

"I was wondering," she started, "who he is, what he is, where he came from, why, why, _why_ he is so bent on destruction and chaos."

She saw Taisho smile and she turned to look at him, head thrust back, eyes staring at a point somewhere above them.

"He is nothing."

Kagome opened her mouth to say that was not what she wanted to hear, but he continued, voice low, conspiratorial, as if he were sharing the greatest secrets in the world.

Perhaps he was, she thought, suddenly anxious for his answers.

"He is nothing but destruction and evil. I do not know where he came from, how he came to exist. But, in the world that I exist in, there are few individuals that can account for any one being's beginning. Magic is powerful and mysterious, it hides, it is unexplainable. Even to the wisest of men and beast.

"He was a demon, always. He was born as such. Perhaps from a clan, perhaps out of some twisted, ancient spell. I could not say and I do not presume to know. By the time he was made known to me, the time to discover his past secrets had passed. He was a warlord, he was amassing armies, he was going to take Japan, and then the world.

"He is not human. He does not harbor compassion or understanding. He is single minded, he is bred to thirst for blood and power. It is in his nature. Chaos, death, suffering. It is what he craves."

Kagome bit the inside of her mouth, trying and failing to understand an all-consuming hatred.

As if he could read her mind, the man breathed out harshly, a near laugh. "You do not understand. Not," he added, stifling the protest that danced across her parted lips, "because you are imperceptive, but because this is beyond what you can imagine. Have you ever lived with rage?"

"Anger certainly, rage, no."

Taisho chuckled easily, a strange sound, one that pulled her eyes to his luminescent face.

"Then you do not understand the demon. Fury, bloodlust, are like his life force, his blood. It is difficult for me to explain him to you, because you do not know such things. You are human and you are not vile or cruel. It is beyond your comprehension."

Kagome was quiet a moment, her gaze falling to her knees, swathed in dark green.

"But _you_ understand him."

There was a strain in the air, and that time, when he looked at her, she could feel his tension, feel unnamed emotions that both startled and caught her, holding her fast.

"I do."

She saw wars and blood. Death and the end of all things beautiful. And once again, she was reminded of the man he had been, the man he would become again if he needed to.

For all that she thought her life a strange, mixed up fairytale, there were brief, tiny slivers of time where she was reminded of the absolute destruction that awaited them. Complete and total.

It frightened her, that the man before her could kill, could level a single blow and end a life, could raise his sword and move his wrist and blot out the existence of one, of many.

It rocked her safe thoughts, her sure ability to see the good in him.

After all, she had deemed him a good man, if not good then honorable, a man of conviction, a man who would kill to save.

He was watching her, sitting there, against the wall of a hallway, inconsistent person that she was, caught up in a story she could not express with words. He was watching her and he was waiting to see what epiphany had lit itself across her mind.

Kagome resisted the urge to stand and pace, resisted the urge to push away from him and run, and run, and run, and run, run until she was down off the mountain, run until she was back in her apartment, until there was only she and Ajax.

She saw herself in her mind's eye, sitting curled up in the couch, alone and lonely. She looked back at the man, the dangerous being, the powerful, untouchable Taisho, and she felt her resolve solidify itself in her heart, a painful reminder of other loss, of growing up, of losing hope, of letting things go.

A small smile touched her lips.

It was strange how, with each passing word she understood him a little bit more, gained back a little of her control, took a tiny step forward into the unknown.

It was funny how an all-powerful being could so easily understand a diminutive museum assistant, and how, really, when everything else was cast aside, she understood him, too.

It was ironic; so much so that she could not reign back the look of incredulous wonder that broke over her face scattering the fear, the worry, and the doubt, push them so far out and away that the emotions might as well never have existed inside of her.

Taisho caught her smile. His eyes gleamed with the lantern light.

"Something amusing?" He drawled carefully, nonchalantly, even as she could see his feint, unhindered, bland interest, there, reflecting in those damned eyes.

She laughed airily and her emerald eyes darted upwards, her breath blowing her wavy bangs out of her face.

"Yes," she responded simply.

When she peaked at him from the corner of her eye she thought she saw the upturned corner of a lip, catching her breath in her chest.

"And what about this dark subject amuses you?"

Kagome cocked her head to the side, as if listening to something, distant and far away.

All she could hear was her breath, and his, faint, steady.

"You understand _him_. " She looked up at him again. "And," her voice was steady, but there were tremulous questions, unsteady answers lying in between each syllable, "and you understand _me_."

"Yes."

Because, really, even if it was a fairytale gone wrong, even if he was a warrior, even if there was blood on his hands, metal between his fingers, even if there was revenge in his pristine, distant heart, even if she was haunted, hunted, even if they both were chased by demons, they were two, a girl and a man, and there was something, something intangible, something that only words could make, something between them, and it was knitting together, pulling her across a giant expanse, reigning her in, whirling around her, tying, binding. Because really, when everything was cast aside, they understood each other, if only for a moment, in a darkened hallway, on the roof of the Roof of the World.

And in that moment, in a darkened hallway, on the roof of the Roof of the World Kagome found that there had never been anything clearer, more distinct, more real than an ancient warrior, sifting around through her head, her heart.

* * *

When there was a break in the snowy winds, he crossed the courtyard, stepping with purpose. At his side and on his back, his weapons were worn, proud, frightening, a warning.

As the days slipped by, each one bringing him closer to the end of the fortnight, he had grown anxious, impatient. He felt his skin crawl as the eyes of the holy men swept over him, as he watched the skies, waiting for his enemies to descend. He wore his weapons now; they were always at his side. At times he reached for them, long fingers clasping the hilt of his oldest weapon, far older than the nameless sword, a gift from his father, from his ancestors.

A grim smile twisted his lips and he met the door of the shadowed place where the fires painted odd colors and threw him back in history. What a strange, twisted place, what a strange twisted fate that history, memory, should always come to find him, always different, but very much the same.

When he opened the door and slipped inside, regal, silent, a bright shadow, a man and a beast, he met the eyes of his history, staring at him over weapons and blades.

The blacksmith froze, his hammer tools clenched in his hands, his eyes hidden and hooded, veiled and forgotten. The two men stared at one another, time and duty bound between them, separated by years but connected by an individual they had both known, once, in different lives.

"You are the Forger's son."

The blacksmith nodded his head, his muscles immediately tensing, eyes darkening.

"I am."

A long silence stretched, careening, deafening, oppressing.

Sesshoumaru was struck by pure irony; by the way fate toyed with him.

There he was, the past, facing the future, the son of the Forger, a once companion, lost to death, wandering the afterlife.

"You knew your father?"

The blacksmith looked down, his dark hair falling across his forehead and into his eyes.

"For a time, yes. He raised me to the age of eight. And then…" He looked up again, a tiny, sad smile lifting the corner of his mouth. "And then he had to pass on, had duties to fulfill before he died.

"He sent you to the Mage."

The man nodded and stepped around his workbench, sliding between the crowded tables, the metals, his boots scuffing the dirt floor, disturbing the air, dust rising with each step.

"He sent me to the Mage. And here I have stayed."

"How long?"

Sesshoumaru watched the young man wipe the sweat off his face, hiding the emotions that played across his eyes, before lowering his forearm and meeting the eyes of the Warlord.

"He passed over two decades ago."

Cold metal was gripped in strong fingers, crushing fingers, clawed appendages.

The blacksmith shook his head, amused. "He lived nearly as long as the Mage. He told me one thing, about you, before he left, in case I ever met you. I was only to tell you that he lived for so long. That and," mirth lit his eyes, lined his face, "five hundred years wasn't too pathetic for a human warrior. He wanted you to know that."

Sesshoumaru snorted, fingers falling away from his weapon's hilt.

"And yet, I am unimpressed."

The man before him laughed gently before sober reality intruded, his chuckle dying out as the present pushed away the past, pushed away the few good memories.

"He taught you his craft," Sesshoumaru gestured to the back walls, lined with simple weapons, glowing dimly by the firelight.

The man turned to gaze at his creations, eyes narrowing, a dark shadow passing over him.

"I learned very little. He was not with me long enough to impart all of his knowledge. Much I learned by trial and mistake. It is unfortunate that his only son cannot carry on his exquisite workmanship." He turned and met Sesshoumaru's eyes again, a hard, tired emotion ruling his words, sharpening their edges, driving them into the warlord's mind. "He did not teach me all of his secrets, his ways, but he did teach one.

"Long before I was born, before I was my father's son, he passed his secrets on to a man of the north of our homeland, a man hidden deep in the mountains, in the fires of an angry land. He is a master blacksmith, a forger, a man who knows the way of the fires and the metals, beyond their physical properties. Like my father, he can use magical properties to forge blades, weapons, and talismans. He knows my father's secrets but coupled wit his own…"

He trailed off, eyes fading, a haunted look settling across his face.

Sesshoumaru's voice sounded out, drowning out the hiss of the flames, "And you are telling me this…"

The man looked up again, his jaw tightening, a muscle working across his forehead. "Because one day you might want to re-forge the blade of your Protector, or find out my father's secrets, or gain another ally in your quest." There was a pause, and the man's hands clenched, knuckles turning white with loss of blood flow. "He would have wanted you to know, and that seems reason enough for me."

Sesshoumaru regarded the son of his former companion, his golden eyes narrowing, perceptive in their examination.

A question stilled on his tongue, waiting, insistent that he ask. But already, he had overstepped his carefully preserved reservation, had spoken out of turn, had expressed interest, had felt the stirring of old duty and failed, dusty emotions.

He had his information, those quick, and fleeting, shallow replies. He had his answers, ones that would have satisfied him decades earlier, ones that would have been sufficient to the stoic Lord at one time. But there, standing in the forgotten forge, caught up in destiny and the unknown, he hovered, almost uncertain, something inside unsatisfied, something still curious, something that wanted to _know everything_.

Perhaps he would have given into this impulse had he not already had the world bearing down his back, breathing on his neck. Perhaps if he had but a few more short days, a few less worries, a few less people to look after, he would have stayed and indulged in things he never did, speaking and questioning. But on some level, he was still the stoic, hard hearted, unbreakable Warlord, a man who distained emotion, a man, a being, a beast, who needed no one, needed only steel and blood to survive.

He was still that man, even as he yearned to speak, to have his questions answered, to know how the past had ended.

And because he was still that man, the warrior king, the beast who took the west, he turned and strode to the door.

He was not angry, impatient perhaps, with no one but himself.

He knew the blacksmith, the son of the Forger, was perceptive, he was of the old world more than the new, he knew his place in the scheme of all things greater. But he was surprised when he heard the man ask, quietly, with a hard jutting, juxtaposed edge,

"No names, Warlord?"

Sesshoumaru stalled, his fangs slipping between his lips in a feral smile, remembering the Forger, the difficult, unforgiving voice, the hot wit, the cool anger, the warrior, the samurai, the ronin. Remembered him so well, it might have been he, instead of his son, speaking those words.

He turned, just enough to catch the man out of the corner of his eye, flashing with dark, angry, bitter humor.

"We are not made for names you and I. We are made for memory."

And he nodded his head, deeper than was perhaps necessary, acknowledging the son of a formidable opponent, a loyal comrade, and he left, resigning himself to the present, if only so he would not lose himself in all that was the past.

* * *

Inuyasha was growing impatient.

Which was doing exceptionally wonderful things to his concentration.

And was, really, unraveling all the hard work he had put into controlling himself around Kagome, all the energy he had invested in teaching her, making them better fighters, warriors even.

Yes, his impatience was slowly getting the better of him and the worst part of it was his slow recognition of Sesshoumaru's words. That he, Inuyasha Taisho, did in fact, need to learn, did in fact, need practice and patience. Always patience. He did, damn it all, need to learn how to control his wayward, wild emotions.

Because, he had found, when he lost his patience, he lost his concentration, and when he lost his concentration… a rogue museum assistant was able to land amateur blows to his person.

He was smarting severely on more than one part of his body.

The only good news about this horrid situation was that for every bruise he had, Kagome had double

She was bent, doubled up, clutching an arm to her stomach where the flat of his sheathed sword had smacked her, right across her ribs. Breathing carefully and steadily, free hand splayed across her thigh, she screwed her eyes shut, teeth clenched and bared.

Inuyasha would have laughed if he were not, at that particular time, ignoring two very prominent pains in his backside and shoulder. As it was, he did not think it an especially wise choice to kick her while she was down, as, under his careful supervision, she was growing into a decent amateur swordsman… woman… girl… museum assistant… thing.

He waited, resisting the urge to rub his hand over the ache in his left hind cheek, where she had somehow managed to hit him. How, he was still unsure, but he was almost certain it had not involved any of the techniques he had taught her, as none of them involved backsides at all, and stuck to more forward facing regions of the body.

Case and point: kneecaps.

She had landed a few blows there, too. But luckily, that had been a few days prior to their current skirmish and he was decently recovered.

Decently recovered and smarting in other, backward facing areas.

When Kagome opened her eyes, they regarded each other warily, neither finding an appropriate insult, or snide remark to throw at the other opponent. Neither in much of a mood to admit their pains or their missteps.

She was a good student, a quick learner. She was sharp, he knew that already, had learned lessons from her tongue, always quick to cut him, sometimes harshly, other times gently, teasingly, in an easy, playful banter, but always, always keen and ready. Like her mind. Like her damned eyes, which, even in the midst of a fair amount of pain, never stopped moving, never pulled themselves from his blade.

Even _he_ could not do that, all of the time, in every practice, without fail.

But no, he thought, somewhat tersely, she had to be the picture of concentration.

Although, really, he had many things to be smug about, among them, his obviously superior skills with the blade.

She would never be great, she would never be fantastic, she would most likely never be half as good as he. Not because she did not have the potential, but because there she was, twenty-one years old, a beginner with the sword. She had not been raised with metal in her hand. She had not been trained from the moment she could walk, to hold a weapon.

No, she would never be a master, would never be much of a swordswoman, not in his opinion, but, she would be able to defend herself, and perhaps, surprise a few enemies along the way.

Kagome rose, pushed her hair out of her eyes and slid her left foot forward, balancing, precarious on her feet, light, like the snow fall outside the dojo windows, her eyes hard, her breathing hitched and uneven.

But, then, he admitted slowly, voice echoing with subdued wonder, she had an undeniable ability to be surprising, and it had never done him well to underestimate her.

She raised her sword, gripped it in both hands, fingers tightening around the metal, the way he had shown her, the way he had taught her. She held the weapon, still sheathed in its new protective scabbard, parallel with the ground, tip pointed to the western wall. Behind the sheen of her scabbard, her face was drawn, her lips parted, her breath moving in and out, discernable against the moan of the wind.

He could see her muscles twitch as she fought to hold the sword aloft, could hear the erratic thump of her heart against her rib cage.

And he had to say, even if it was to himself, even if he would never utter the words out loud, she was a damned fine example of determination, even if she would never be a master, or anything but an amateur.

Her sword moved and he raised his blade, a shrill reverberation reigning down through the air, beginning at the place their swords met.

Yes, he thought, never a master, but surprising just the same.

And through the glitter of metal, sheathed sword against sheathed sword, they smiled at each other.

* * *

Kagome winced as she bent to retrieve her sword from the ground.

Every muscle she had not been previously aware of, was screaming at her, and the one's she already knew of weren't too happy with her either.

She scowled as she caught sight of her long robes, pooling on the ground about her feet. They were so impractical, but apparently the monastery on top of the mountain was not stocked with gym shorts. She had searched, in vain, for anything to wear, anything besides the long flowing garments that threatened to trip her every time she moved.

She had finally given up and bunched the length of skirt up around her knees, freeing her feet but impeding her stances.

Needless to say, Ash had the upper hand, even with her mildly improved wardrobe.

Hell, she snarled to herself, cranky, tired, sweaty, and sore, he had always had the upper hand, probably always would.

She was feeling terribly down, caged, tired, anxious even. Learning the basics of swordplay only amplified the apprehensive fluttering in her stomach. She had watched the two Taisho brothers for days. Behind lowered eyelashes, or over the top of a book she could not read, she had watched them.

Ash was edgy and Taisho was surly.

Neither of these would have been much of an indicator to anything in particular if she had not seen the way Ash's eyes drew shadows each time he looked out across the mountain, the way he fell back into himself when they stopped speaking, the way he looked over his shoulder, appearing for a brief moment as a young man, haunted and hunted, rather than the fearsome warrior brother of the Great Taisho.

Yes, Ash was much easier to read than Taisho, but even with the man's perfect ability to conceal all things, she could sense the change in him. He was so powerful it was a wonder more of his emotions and state of mind did not leak into the air.

As it was, she could feel his power, reverberating, waiting, ready to strike. It was unnerving, more than usual, to be around him when he was in such a state.

She couldn't blame him much though. She was beginning to feel the effects of their extended stay on the mountain. Moreover, she was beginning to feel completely exposed, as if she were standing in the middle of the snow covered expanse waving bright flags, alerting their enemies to their exact presence.

It was a wonder, she believed, in her limited knowledge of all things magical and even of all this malicious, that they had not been attacked, that their enemies had not amassed and hunted them down, as they sat, practically defenseless, in a large, quiet monastery.

Kagome took a painful step forward, mentally pushing all thoughts away as she would need all of her concentration to focus on the amount of pain she was experiencing.

She has known it would not be easy, learning the way of the sword. And yet, a tiny, very infinitesimal part of her brain had clung to the image of herself brandishing a shining weapon, a complete natural at all things involving a sharp, pointy weapon.

This image had long been shot to hell, and she gained no amusement from it when it surfaced in her mind to taunt her.

Kagome made her way across the dojo, following the steps Ash had trod not more than five minutes before her. All she could think of was the appealing warmth of a hot soak in one of the oversized bathing tubs.

Hobbling over to the doors of the dojo, she was surprised to find herself drawn short, almost walking straight into the Mage, standing in the center of the doorway, almost as if he were barring it, guarding her from walking out into the hall.

She looked up at him with wide, tired eyes, blowing a breath of air out the side of her mouth, moving the unruly waves of hair out of her eyes and off her sweaty cheeks. Perhaps if she had not been sore, had her muscles, bones, and general anatomy felt as if it was about to fall apart, as if she were held together by very flimsy, old string, she would have welcomed his unannounced and surprising appearance. As it was, her tired brain was having a very hard time gathering his face from memory and conjuring up their history.

She stared at him for a confused moment before she winced.

"You aren't here to poke me with your magic are you? Because I am far past exhausted and do not know if I possess the right temperament to deal with magical trauma right now."

The Mage looked down his nose at her, a tiny pair of golden spectacles obscuring her view of his eyes.

When he spoke, she was taken aback by the tired, weary tone of his voice, rasping, weak, as if he applied too much force his very vocal chords would break.

"No, Miss Higurashi, I am not here to torment you."

She looked up at him with despair and worry, her heart catching at a funny place in her throat. "I'm sorry, I did not mean to be so short. Are you all right? You look…"

"Worn? Exhausted? Drained?" He asked, the barest hint of a smile creeping into his dull voice.

Kagome smiled warily, her eyes narrowing as she examined the lines in his face, the shadows under the tiny gold-rimmed glasses over his eyes.

"Well, yes. That and," unknowingly, she cocked her head to one side, staring at him, searching for he words dancing around in her head. "You look almost…" she trailed off again, biting her tongue.

"What?" The monk asked, and when he spoke, she saw the softening of his skin, watched as some of his worry faded away. "What do I look like?"

"You look defeated," she said softly, painfully, heart twisting painfully in her chest.

The man did smile then and when he lowered his head to look into her eyes, she saw the familiar twinkle, the return of the rascal.

"Never defeated," he said with a smile, though she could hear the seriousness of his words, the truth behind the soft speech, "only resigned."

They watched each other for a brief moment before he spoke again, breaking the strange spell between them, dissolving all the perplexing, tired emotion she had felt from him. Before she could ask him what he meant, what he had resigned himself to, he was back to the quick witted smiling man she had met, the man who sparkled with secrets and hid his powerful, dark magic well.

"May I show you something?"

Kagome hesitated, the faint echo of a warm bath and the call of a comfy futon ringing in her head. But curiosity had always been her downfall, or at the very least, her catalyst for downfall, and she nodded, afraid that if she spoke she would decline and would lose a chance to see mystery and magic.

The Mage turned, the light glancing off his glasses, momentarily blinding her. When the flash of white disappeared, she saw his arm, held to his side, and she rested her hand there, faintly aware that she must have looked an awful mess, but much too intrigued to care.

He led her away from the dojo, through the hallways, past the windows, past the incense burning in a shadowed alcove, past the quiet murmurs of talk, past the men who eyed her with disdain, passed those who ignored her completely, passed a set of stairs and up another.

When finally they stopped, Kagome was so turned around she wondered if they had somehow walked into another monastery.

She looked around her. They were walking down a long, empty corridor, devoid of people, a vacant space. When they rounded a corner, she gasped at the sudden surge of wind, winding around the suddenly exposed walkway.

There, on her left side, the wall fell away to beams, the air rushing madly past, and she realized through the blinding surge of the ice and snow, that the side of the monastery they had ended up on, was the side she had first envisioned, where she had first seen the Mage, so long ago, in her apparition from the trapped wood spirit.

She turned her face away from the harsh bite of the wind, closing her eyes, nearly pressing her face in to the arm of the man guiding her foreword.

And sooner than she would have expected, she was pulled through a doorway and into the gentle comfort of heat and fire.

When she opened her eyes her heart skipped a beat.

They were standing in the entrance to a large domed room. Each wall was set with windows, high and arching, the very top of the glass reaching to the ceiling. Outside, Kagome could see the surge of the storm over the mountains, hardly visible through the white blanket of colorless downfall.

All around her there were trinkets, a globe, a map attached to a crumbling wooden frame, a silver telescope, pointed out to the world, strange writing scrawled across pieces of parchment hanging from the ceiling, fluttering gently in a soundless, untouchable breeze. There were several tables of different sizes and heights, placed haphazardly in the middle of a shinning marble floor.

The Mage, standing next her, inhaled deeply, his eyes closing, a languid smile parting his lips, striping the years from his face.

When she glanced at him from the corner of her eye, she thought, maybe, perhaps, he looked as he had once, when he was a young man, traveling with her Protector.

But the moment passed and he was stepping foreword into the room, hands clasped behind his back, fingers encircling a wrist, parting the golden bracelets around his hands.

Even with his back to her, she could feel his smile in the air, mingling with the low burning fire, hissing gently in an untidy corner.

"One of the benefits of being mistaken as an all knowing, future savior is the insistence that I have a space to myself. The insistence and," he said, his words twisting with irony and dry humor, "gifts."

Kagome walked to him and turned in a slow circle, eyes scanning a small, messy bookshelf, a table with winking candles, a basin with crystal water, a vine growing up a wall, flowering, its white petals glistening with dew.

"This is your space?" Her words came out in a weak breath, the subtle beauty of the place catching her off guard.

The Mage laughed gently and released his hands, reaching forward to the objects on a desk, running a loving hand over them, touching each quill, each vibrant prayer flag, each ink jar, each bead of a used rosary.

"Yes, this is all mine."

Kagome swallowed around the lump in her throat.

She couldn't readily explain why the tiny room filled with its strange assortment of collectables would cause her eyes to prick or her breath to harden in her lungs. She sighed, releasing the bittersweet urge to cry and smiled, allowing her eyes to drift over everything once more, twice more.

"It's beautiful," she finally managed to choke out, mentally berating herself for falling to pieces over his personal space.

The man turned to her and bowed his head pride worn like a cloak, shinning over his face and in the strength of his shoulders, the depth of his eyes. He drew himself upright again and pointed to the thin, fragile paper strips above them.

"Do you see those?"

She craned her neck, her emerald eyes narrowing as she examined the parchment, each thread and each line of thick black writing, foreign to her eyes.

"Yes."

The Mage gestured absently at the fluttering pieces of paper. "Those are spell scrolls, O-fuda, talisman. They are inscribed with-"

"The names of deities," Kagome finished quietly.

A well honed, piercing gaze landed on her features and she looked up to meet the searching eyes of the Mage.

She smiled and shrugged. "I lived in Japan for a few years. I also found time to take a few Asian studies classes. But," she continued, looking back up at the talisman, "I do not mean to presume. Sorry. Continue."

Next to her, the man smiled gently, fondly, and looked out one of his large windows, sauntering over to them, pressing his hands against the glass.

"They are inscribed with the names of deities. Though, not all are. Some are written with protective spells, damaging spells, spells to erect protective barriers…" He trailed off and turned from the window, eyebrows raised, "Some even invoke a temporary invisibility. I do not suppose you have already been acquainted with this?"

Kagome frowned trying to think of a time when invisibility or the subject of invisibility had ever occurred in her general area. It was difficult to think, really, as the very idea was a rather hard one to wrap her mind around.

She had seen many odd, strange, even bothersome occurrences since she had met Taisho, but for reasons she could not name, invisibility seemed to be a contrived and utterly ridiculous notion.

"No, I don't believe so. Should I have been?"

The man laughed and shook his head, the gesture shaking his entire person, the gold around his wrists touching together, the familiar sound surrounding her and easing away her anxiety.

"No, not really. Taisho has been known to use my talisman and I merely… wondered."

Kagome's anxiety came flooding back into the pit of her stomach as a mental image of herself doing ridiculously stupid things, like tripping up stairs and falling flat on her face while practicing with a sword, all the while an invisible Taisho was watching, gripping her inner eye. She felt a blush swarm her face as a cold sweat broke out over her body.

She dared not think of anything past that, as the implications as to what one could get away with while invisible were too extensive for her liking.

Before her, watching her face change from a deathly shade of grey white to scarlet red was the Mage, laughing behind his attempt to cover a smile, shoulders shaking, eyes twinkling with unchecked mirth.

Kagome scowled at him and ran a shaking hand over her face, attempting to regain her composure and at least a fraction of her dignity.

"No," she said a little tersely, mouth drawn tight, "I do not have any experience with invisibility. Though," she added sourly, "I wouldn't know if I had, obviously, as Taisho would most likely keep his reasons for being invisible around me a secret. And I would, therefore, _not_ know that invisibility was even possible!"

The monk laughed again and held his hands out, as if in doing so he would contain her mortification and directionless anger.

"I did not say he had, merely wondered if he had informed you."

Kagome waved her hand, looking sheepish. "I know. I'm sure if he used it around me he would have a good reason. I just can't help but feel as if he may have witnessed every clumsy and embarrassing moment I have ever had."

"The likelihood of such an event is slim to none."

"And that is why I am not running after him demanding to know if he was ever invisible around me."

They shared a smile and the Mage walked back toward her. He ambled around a table, keeping it between them, his eyes suddenly averted.

"If I were to ask you something, could I expect you to answer with honesty?"

Kagome hesitated, drawing in a sharp little breath before admitting, "I suppose it would depend on the question. I don't readily admit my heart's deepest secret's, you know."

The man leaned foreword, his hands stretching, fingers splaying as his weight leaned on the creaking wooden surface of the tabletop.

"If I were to ask you what you if you had ever heard of the Shikon Jewel, what would you say?"

And suddenly, Kagome felt as if everything in the universe had stopped moving, felt as if all the eyes in the world were turned to her, felt as if no one was breathing.

Well, _she_, at least, was not breathing, had stopped taking in oxygen the moment her had uttered the name of the infamous and powerful gem Taisho had once been so hesitant to tell her of.

Kagome faltered, wavered, felt her knees shake, saw, rather than felt, the magnitude behind his words, saw, rather than felt the swift rise in his magic, dark blue, nearly black, rising behind his shoulders, falling to the floor like a mammoth shadow, dwarfing him in its expanse.

When she remembered to breathe, she remembered to think, and her mind whirled around, calling and dredging up what little she knew, heaving it to the forefront of her mind, dropping it there, like lead, a solid, virtually physical thought.

"I would say that I know very little, nothing past what Taisho has told me."

The Mage lifted his eyes and in them, she saw the desolation, the desperation of a man hunted.

"And what little do you know?"

She blinked and looked away, unnerved by his intense perusal, his steady, demanding examination.

"It is known as the Shikon no Tama." She glanced back up at the Mage, still staring at her, before plowing ahead, turning to look out the window rather than meet his eyes. "It was created to embody… how did he say it… four characteristics of Shinto."

The Mage walked closer to her and she looked back at him.

"Courage," the word fell from her lips, unbidden, and the Mage held up his index finger.

One.

"Friendship," his middle finger rose.

Two.

"Wisdom," her voice faltered, and a third finger rose.

Three.

She stared at his ancient hands, lined with age, old scars healed white, slashed across his flesh, dark with exposure to sun, worn, ink stained.

"And," she started, afraid, oh, so very afraid to say the last one, if only because it was such a frightening idea, love, and with it loss, "love."

Four.

"Four traits, four souls, four characteristics. All admirable, all worthy qualities to possess." He turned from her, dropping his hand, gazing back out the window, eyes troubled. "I am sure he informed you that there is little known about its making, either that or the one who made it. It is old, it is powerful, and it can be used for good or evil. I am sure he has told you this."

Warily, Kagome nodded her head, yes.

"But that is not all that is known about the mysterious and powerful Shikon no Tama. Not all." He looked over his shoulder at her, apprehensive and pale, curious; even as his words struck a fear in her that she had not felt for weeks. "No," he murmured quietly, clasping his hands together, his dark robes fluttering around his form, "that is not all that is known." He sighed distantly and his shoulders slumped and he lost a fraction of his proud posture.

"Some say, and I would believe them, as I have seen the jewel, and once, a very long time ago I held it in the palm of my hand, that it is not only the embodiment of those four characteristics, the soul of a spiritual religion, but that it is nature itself, connected to all things, higher, older, more powerful, more wise than any other thing, be that human or inanimate object. It is believed that for each admirable characteristic, there is a natural one to compliment, because, really," he said, a smile in his voice, "nothing can ever survive on its own. Humans, demons, and all beasts, gods, and otherworldly beings would be nowhere without this earth we stand upon. We, all of us, need complimentarily pieces to make ourselves whole."

Kagome's limbs went numb, his words sinking into her skin, the voice of another floating around her head, stealing her breath.

_'Complete the whole.'_

Words uttered by a tramped and dying spirit, lost on a swimming northern plain.

"And while those characteristics, wisdom, friendship, courage, and love are important, they would not exist without the earth upon which we walk. There would have been no religion, not divine or demonic power, no love, no courage, no wisdom, no friendship had we, all of us, not set foot on this land, had not learned and fought and died and loved. And so, some believe nature to be the ultimate key to the infamous and magical jewel, and not, as many more believe, the Shinto way of the four souls."

He exhaled, and from where she stood, she thought she saw a smile, sad and empty, grow along the corners of his mouth.

"Does Taisho know this?" She asked him quietly, her own voice startling her with its staccato, scratchy catch.

The Mage regarded her for a moment and then looked upward, shrugging, his eyes sliding across the magical talisman above his head. "I would assume so, but, I am not certain."

This struck Kagome as odd. Her brow furrowed and she opened her mouth to question him, but was cut off when he spoke again.

"Do not worry Miss Higurashi, I have no intention of keeping valuable information from him. I merely wondered if you knew anything more than I."

Kagome laughed then, shaking her head at him. "How could I possibly know anything more than you? I hardly know anything! At least where magic and swords and powerful jewels are concerned."

The Mage smiled, but his eyes held her own, and for a moment, she thought she saw the glimmer of something there, a mystery, a secret, dancing like fire in his dark depths. But then he was walking back toward her, gaze already averted to his tabletops.

"I have no idea, but it would not surprise me if you knew more than me. I was simply curious." He reached, fingers stretching, unearthing more priceless artifacts from under scrolls and dusty books. "Now, I have one more thing to show you before I return you to your capable Protector."

From the depths of a particularly large pile of scrolls he pulled forth a small wooden box, hand carved, simple. Before Kagome registered what he was doing, he had extended his hand, holding the box in front of her face, gesturing impatiently that she take it.

With unsure fingers, she reached upwards, hands curling around the box, lowering it before her, gazing at it with veiled interest.

"I believe once, I called you Vajra," he said evenly, though, underneath his tone she could hear the peal of laughter.

Kagome ran a calloused fingertip over the smooth box, "Yes."

"That was not a strictly accurate name for you. Open the box."

Kagome obliged, slowly, peeling back the lid to reveal a delicate silver chain and two small silver objects resting gently on dark cloth. Her bright eyes narrowed and she looked a question at the mysterious man before her.

He circled around the table to stand by her, taking the box from her hand.

"This," he said, carefully plucking the chain from the box, the tiny silver objects attached to it jingling as they fell against one another, sliding along the chain, "is a Vajra and Bell." He held the tiny objects up before her eyes.

One was, she could see, most certainly a bell, small and silver, ringing gently as it moved in his hand. The other silver object was not much larger than a thimble and appeared to be, for all appearances, a thin rod with spokes on both ends, fashioned to turn back to the center, each end rounded.

"A Vajra," the Mage continued, smiling down at her, "is not really an appropriate name for you, Miss Higurashi, as the Vajra usually represents a male. The bell however," he held it up to her eyes and shook it, "is the female." He lowered his hands to hers, allowing the chain to fall into her upturned palm.

"We will not get into the Buddhist ideas and uses of The Bell and Vajra, as we have a very limited amount of time. But, what I will tell you is that its uses are many, they are believed to balance, to invoke power, to make things pure, to bring wisdom, to bring protection. The Bell and the Vajra are never separated, as when they are together, they accomplish more than they ever could alone. I give these to you."

Kagome looked up at him, startled.

"Me?"

The man laughed. "Yes, you. Wear it always, as it may protect you when all else fails. At the very least, I can say that I have given something of great importance to the woman who will help save the world."

She shook her head, staring down at the tiny, beautiful objects. Such heavy words to hear and live up to, she nearly gave him back the necklace and announced he had the wrong person for such a job, everyone did.

But when she looked back into his eyes she could find no argument, no words except, "Thank you," and she pulled the necklace over her head, tucking it underneath her robes, feeling its cool metal press against her skin, a strange comfort rising in her chest, knowing the man wished her well.

She stood for a moment, gathering her wits, which, coupled with a long practice session and more cryptic words and ideas, had been scattered about her mind. She felt strangely distant then, standing in his little hideaway, one hand clasping the chain about her neck, watching the monk as he gestured upwards and several of the talisman floated down to land gently in his hand.

Without another word he offered her his arm and together they left the secret, beautiful place and walked back out into the storm.

It wasn't until the had left the open hallway and were farther within the monastery that Kagome realized why she had felt so awed and overwhelmed by the little space the man kept for himself.

It had felt, when she gazed at all the loved things, the oddities, the books, the magic surging just out of her reach, it had felt, very, very much like coming home.

* * *

Sesshoumaru leaned against the wall, gazing out into the black night, his mind clouded and cluttered, his senses surging and tingling.

It was late in the night, but sleep eluded him, and he chose to think rather than to lay, listless, chasing after something he could not obtain.

The end of the fortnight was rapidly approaching, but he could see no joy or relief in it. He felt nothing but anger, nothing but the ugly shift tin his power, the clench of his muscles as he flexed his fingers, claws gleaming in the low glow of the candles.

A gentle knock at the shoji screen separating his room from Kagome's pulled him out of his sullen musings and he turned as the door slid open, the young woman appearing out of the gloom.

"I saw your candles were lit," she said, by way of an explanation.

He said nothing, merely watched her as she approached, carefully, as if she were afraid to startle him.

"Couldn't sleep?" She asked with hesitance.

"No," he rumbled, voice deep and scratchy with lack of use. He had not seen she, Ash, or the Mage for a day or so, had kept to himself, preferring to brood in peace.

"Me neither," she said padding over to stand next to him.

Sesshoumaru studied her, looking out his window and his eyes caught on the faint sheen of silver around her neck.

His hand reached upward and touched her skin, fingers snaking underneath the chain, tugging gently.

At his sudden touch, Kagome jumped and turned to face him, pulse hammering wildly at the base of her throat.

"What is this?" He asked carelessly, fingers still insistent, pulling at the chain, each tug bringing it further out of her robe front.

"Oh," she said, looking down, "The Mage gave this to me."

Sesshoumaru pulled the chain up and out, bringing it before his eyes, consequently pulling Kagome with it.

He studied the objects, small and infinitesimal between his large fingers. A small smile appeared on his lips when he realized what the objects were.

"It appears the Mage is rather fond of you."

He dropped the necklace and it fell to her chest, the ring of the bell muted as it hit. Kagome blinked rapidly and stepped back after a moment's pause, as if she had only just realized she had been released from his hold.

"I suppose so," she answered faintly.

Sesshoumaru eyed her, leaning against the opposite side of the window, her fingers wrapping around the trinkets at the end of the silver chain.

"How are lessons with Ash?"

Kagome smiled and bowed her head. "They are fine. Tiring but fine. I don't think I have made much improvement, but I suppose it is better than none at all."

Sesshoumaru stood a little straighter and leaned down over her, his hand reaching for hers. He pulled it, pliant, into his grasp, turning it over to examine it against the glow of the candles.

He snorted. "He is not watching your hold on the sword."

He ran a finger over her many calluses, the faint bruises under the skin.

"How do you know that?" She asked weakly.

"You are bruising in all the wrong places."

Kagome sighed and instead of erupting in indignation, attempted to withdraw her hand from him and go back to her side of the window.

He held fast, hand glowing white, healing power warming the tips of his fingers.

"I would think you to look down upon healing practice injuries," she commented lightly, squirming under his touch.

"Normally," he replied, voice quiet, "but these are not usual times and we have few options. If you are healthy you can practice more, learn. That is most important."

When he finished with her right hand he reached for her left, but she was already wiggling out of his grasp. Retreating from him.

For reasons that were too many, too proud and arrogant, he found he did not like his sword's Protector moving away from him, the man who had sworn to keep her safe.

With a low rumble of soundless words, he grabbed her left hand and held her close, anger buzzing between his ears and in his eyes. It had been a long time since she had vexed him, and it seemed odd, strange even, that she would do so, again, then, by removing herself from his presence. At one time, he would have done almost anything to have her away from him.

But that, he realized, had changed, as in every moment, he was constantly divided, wondering after the girl who was to protect his blade, was the key to everything.

He did not like that she pulled away when he was attempting to help her, to protect her.

It went against his very nature, curdled in his veins, tinged his vision with red.

Because really, all he wanted was for her to be safe, as everything depended on her, and really, on a personal level, things would be quite boring without her around.

So, in many ways, it was in his best interest to keep her alive and safe and all right and healthy and that meant that she had to stay close. Always close.

"I'm fine," she muttered, somewhat testily, tensing against his determined touch.

"Nevertheless."

Kagome looked up at him when he finished fixing her tired hands, when he did not let her go. She gazed at him with her damned bright eyes and he saw her leafing through him like a book, reading his gaze like no one else was quite able to do.

And he realized, in that moment, that she was further inside him than he had thought. He had believed he to be the one that had broken down her barriers and her walls and was capable of knowing, without a doubt, what she was thinking and feeling.

But in that moment, with truth shinning a little too harshly for his liking, he found that _no_, he the Great Sesshoumaru Taisho, was not as well hidden and cloistered as he had always believed himself to be.

Because there, standing against his window, her hand in his, Kagome could see all his possessive desire to protect and save, written there, in his eyes, and when she saw it and read it, she relaxed and let go.

And for the Warlord of the Western Lands, the being who had destroyed a demon, this was a more earth shattering and untimely development as any.

They stared at one another, an unspoken understanding, frightening, whirling, strange, unknown, and yet entirely familiar, flooding the scant space between them, and he worked his throat to say something, even as she opened her mouth to let her words fall.

But it was never to be so, as in that moment, the thud of running footsteps approached the door to his room, and the shoji screen was thrown open, a wild eyed mage breathing raggedly, gripping the doorframe for support, his eyes dark and determined.

And when he spoke, Sesshoumaru felt his world restart.

"They come. Your enemies. They come."


	29. From the heights

_Thanks for reading: http://travelingeast. (at) deviantart. com  
_

**Chapter 29**

**From the heights**

The world was always changing. There was never any sense of normality. There was always something, one little thing that drove away any thoughts, any beliefs that everything could follow a pattern. There was always _something_.

And the difference between Sesshoumaru and the rest of the world was that he saw it coming where everyone else turned a blind eye and suffered the consequences of the ever morphing life, the ever-changing fate, the inevitability of upheaval. He saw it with a clear and undiluted eye, watched its approach and felt nothing but a small sense of satisfaction when the bottom fell out, as inevitably, it always would.

And so when he heard the footsteps of the Mage, when the door to his room slid open with insistent force, when a voice demanded his attention, brought him news of his enemies, it was not surprise or fear that bloomed in his chest and wound down to his gut.

No, it was something far less measurable and much more subtle.

It was nothing but understanding and acceptance, it was nothing but the mournful knowledge that he would never sit on the roof of the Roof of the World again, that he would never walk the monastery halls, that he would never reveal his secrets in hidden shadows and watch as they weaved there way around the little Protector at his side.

That was all over.

The warlord had returned to his domain behind golden eyes and pale skin.

And all else was forgotten, all the words, all the shared moments, the mystery, the swords, the snow, the candlelight, the memory. All was forgotten.

Because in that split second when the words left the Mage's mouth, when he uttered the last thing they all, all of them, wanted to hear, the first thing to come to his mind was his duty.

Nothing else mattered past protection and safety. Nothing else mattered when all he really had to do was blight one soul from the earth. Because everything else, _everything_ that was not the death of the demon was a perk, was a lovely little joy that he was afforded, a diversion from his one and only task.

But that was all forgotten and he was back, The Lord of the Western Lands, the ruler supreme, the man, the beast who ruled by blood and war. He was back and there was nothing but duty binding him to the world.

Sesshoumaru pulled Kagome out into the hallway. In a whirl of white and green they slipped out into the deep shadows and faced the Mage, illuminated by a solitary lantern, held high in his hands.

The man pushed Kagome forward, "Get Ash," and turned to the Mage, his golden eyes flickering with he orange glow of the lantern, a dark fury curling upwards from deep inside, blooming outward, coiling like a heavy mist, permeating and penetrating the air.

"How long?"

The Mage met his eyes with his steadily.

"A day. Perhaps two if we are lucky. _If_ we are unlucky…"

Sesshoumaru's lips parted in a fierce smile, his sharpened canines gleaming with threatening light.

"Then they will be on us by dawn." He sneered, a laugh catching in his throat.

Glancing past the Mage's shoulder and raised arm, he watched as Inuyasha's door slid open and a bleary eyed, tousled Taisho stumbled out into the hallway. He glanced down at Kagome and up the hall to Sesshoumaru and the Mage.

Sesshoumaru met Inuyasha's eyes and the two brothers exchanged silent words and in the span of a heartbeat, Inuyasha lost all of his confusion and a dark shade of grey resolve colored his eyes in a heat of his resolution. Contours of darker shapes, whispers of memory flashed across his face and suddenly, he was lined and aged, bent under the weight of all he needed to do, what he needed to avenge.

And in that moment, the brothers were more alike than they cared to admit, each poised to strike, standing, waiting, impatient, in the middle of a darkened hallway.

Sesshoumaru turned to the Mage. "We will leave now. We will lead them down the mountain. Get your things, Mage, we cannot wait for you."

He turned to walk away but fingers caught the sleeve of his robes, dragging him to a stop. He looked down into the Mage's lined face, watching the wash of emotions playing over his aged features. When the man spoke there was no hesitance, no frightful note rising in his cadence, there was nothing but pure conviction, steady and hard.

"I am not ready. We cannot leave yet."

Sesshoumaru rounded on him, his mouth parting in a feral snarl. "You are not _ready_? I would ask you to recall a certain conversation then, Mage. As I remember, I promised you a fortnight, but only if time allowed. You say you do not know how long it will be before our enemies descend upon us. My response to that information still stands. _We will leave_. Now. I do not wish to give my enemies the upper hand in anyway and as you seem to be incapable of understanding: to stay is to throw the Protector and my sword into their awaiting arms."

The holy man's apprehension fell away, tunneling down, burrowing deep and dark, memory resurfacing. He was a different man in that instant after Sesshoumaru spoke, no longer jovial, but a powerful warrior, a magical man from the past.

"You _will_ wait."

He held Sesshoumaru's gaze for a moment more before sweeping past in a flurry of dark blue robes, his anger flying about him, floating at the edges of his fingertips, hazy indigo and glowing.

Sesshoumaru started after him. "You are not certain of when they will descend upon us. You are consigning the Protector to considerable danger, demanding such things."

The man gestured absently over his shoulder, a flippant raise of the hand.

"What I am _doing_ may save your lives later. You will thank me then, I am sure. We will not be caught unaware. I have made arrangements. We will be far gone by the time they meet the gates of this monastery."

Sesshoumaru followed the man down the length of the hallway, pausing as it melted into the large central staircase, watching as the Mage's dark robes snapped in irate indignation, fluttering around his feet as he mounted the stairs.

"And what sort of arrangements can _deflect_ these enemies?" He spat at the man's retreating back.

"Not deflect. Merely warn. I have trusted men in the outlying areas, in the villages, on the mountains. They were the ones who warned me of the approach of enemies. Beyond my men there are the protective spells of the mountain trails, the ancient and powerful magic of the land. You witnessed them as you ascended the trail," The Mage finished curtly, sighing impatiently.

Sesshoumaru laughed contemptuously, the sound ragged and sharp at its edges.

"I saw a poor excuse for a diversion. This magic you stand by did little more than buy us time. I am sure it did not destroy those enemies and they, they were nothing but lackeys. Do you mean to tell me it withstand the potential army driving toward us? How many are there? Can your men count as well, or are they only good for reporting the obvious?"

The Mage did not respond, and growing angrier by the passing seconds, Sesshoumaru started up the stairs, taking them two at a time, his eyes boring into the bobbing back of the holy man's robes, heading around the successive curve of the staircase, a half a floor ahead of him.

"They are good for much, The Watchers," he finally called over his shoulder, "Do not belittle their power or their use. Had it not been for them we may not have known of the enemy's approach. They did not have a precise count, no. The information that I was given was hurried, rushed and meant for the sole purpose of warning us. I expect we will know more soon."

Sesshoumaru's brow drew down, a dark shadow passing over his eyes, mysterious and hooded, golden depths fierce with umbrage. He could hear the rhythmic sound of his heart in his ears, thudding against his rib cage, could feel the blood pumping through his veins, could feel the murderous rage tethered and held back by his unfathomable control, ensnared and channeled into more productive outlets than blind wrath.

He inhaled, the smell of the night sharp and alive within his nostrils. He breathed out satisfaction, his claws itching for blood, his heart calling for vengeance, for the demon to come and meet him.

A grim smile danced on his lips, parting them, revealing his tipped fangs, winking with feral malice. He longed to sink them into the neck of his opposition, to taste the blood of destruction on his tongue.

Outwardly, he was nothing but a pale streak of silver and white, whipping up the curving staircase, his eyes at the level he was headed, his mind sharp and clear, honed, precise, like a sword itself, tunneling down to a point, the place he would first draw his sword, the time when he would first draw blood.

He was a creature made for battle, he craved it at times, because really, when one was tied so closely with the end of destruction, the figure that stood for death and darkness, it was a wonder he thought of anything but violent endings.

It was his damned job to be morbid; to do what no mortal could do, and no spirit would dream.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Inuyasha appear, hovering at the entrance to the stairs, his eyes darting between the dark robes of the Mage, high above, traveling the rounded staircase, and Sesshoumaru, momentarily paused in pursuit. He pulled his eyes away from his younger brother and darted up the stairs, calling out to the Mage as he did.

"You had best hurry, Mage, if you wish to finish whatever damned bit of sorcery you believe is so important. We are leaving at first light, with or without you."

"That would be unwise," the Mage yelled over the railing his voice echoing dully, "You came all this way for Fate, following its path. It would be a waste to divert from its path now. What if leaving me is not in your design?" His voice was strained and weak, and coupled with the distance between them, circling higher and higher, Sesshoumaru nearly lost the words to the air.

"Then I will make my own fate," He snapped, slowing his pace as he came upon the floor that housed the library. "And fate," he added quietly, to no one but himself, "will never make me."

Behind him, at the entrance to the staircase, a darker younger shadow moved, following the path of two angry men, and forgotten in a dimly lit corridor, the Protector of the greatest sword ever made, blinked away confusion and fear and made a long lonely walk up dusty stairs.

* * *

Kasa was named for his speed. 

He had always been quick footed, his legs always itching to run.

It was not much of a surprise then, when he was bestowed with the honor of waiting and watching, his duty to see and then to run, to run with the wind and carry home messages, carry home what he had seen with his eyes, what he had heard with his ears.

He was fast, he was quick, and there were none more agile than he.

He could traverse a mountainside in the blink of an eye, could disappear in the failing quiver of a heartbeat.

He ran and he watched, as was his duty, as was expected of him.

And that night, he had been given word by the other watchers, and he was waiting on his quick feet, to run and bring the news, to do what he could.

The tiny hut juxtaposed against the giant rocks, sharp and jagged, sheltered him from the wind. The tiny village was nothing more than a few loosely conglomerated huts, pulled together out of common need and a fierce desire to survive. He was on the outskirts, against a winding, hidden trail, one of his own making.

He had made that path through sheer will alone. After years of watching the horizon, running up and down the snow covered mountain, he had become like the place itself, able to move and disappear like the wind over the crests of snow.

It came as a complete surprise then, when, through the darkness in which he stood, a silver arc of light tumbled down and caught him in the chest, slicing through, ending his easy breathing, cutting him, his dark blood splashing into the pristine snow, the night suddenly so very, very wrong.

He reached down and his eyes followed the course of his hands to see, there, buried in his chest, a sword, dripping with his life force.

He would have laughed had his lungs not collapsed.

He would have laughed.

Because, for all his belief that he was the runner, the messenger, the man who ran like a deer, the one who danced with the wind, his speed and his abilities, he had been killed, standing still, thinking about how clever and powerful he was, how fast and accurate his magic was.

And now he was going to die.

He gripped the sword in his chest as he sank down to his knees, duty crowding his vision, blackening its edges.

Curious. There was no pain, only a vague gaping realization that he had failed, wailing in his head.

Glazed eyes looked upward and he smiled at the irony.

Strange that he, the fastest of the watchers, should be killed by the element he so loved.

As Kasa closed his eyes and painted the snow crimson, the ethereal wind spirit removed his sword and swept away across the mountain, leaving not but a footprint in the snow. And behind him, following his wake, unseen and almost, nearly unheard, were the whispers of voices and the hum of power.

As the clouds parted before the moon, the shadows of the wind warriors were tossed high on a snowdrift, filmy and grey. And then they were gone, leaving no trace of their existence, none but the dying man in the snow, smiling away his sorrow.

He breathed in weakly, too tired to struggle for his air.

With the last of his waning strength, he whispered a weak incantation to the wind, the pure essence of the mountain, hoping, praying with all he had, that it would circumvent the dark power sliding up the mountainside, that it would stay pure, that the elements would not fall to the darkness of the devil.

The wind murmured gently in his ear, quelling the dull fear he felt in the back of his fading head. There was a breath of cold air, frigid, icy, fluttering across his brow, acknowledgement and gratitude, a snowy fallen snow, whisking the clouds into a furious frenzy, cracking the ice and rock on the mountain face.

And alone and dark against a doleful grey tent, Kasa stopped breathing and let his heart rest.

* * *

The Mage hurried through the dark rows of bookshelves, nervous hands plucking parchments and books, his eyes sliding along the dusty corners and dark shelves. Sesshoumaru could hear him fumbling, even as he stood at the farthest corner, arms crossed over his chest, anger ripe and ready to strike. 

"Mage," he barked, voice cutting the night in two, fricative, laced with pique.

"Sesshoumaru!" The man yelled back, further annoying the stoic warlord. "I will be ready by dawn. For now I need you to leave me in peace so I may finish this and stave off disaster. If you _wish_ to help me, rather than hinder, you may do me a favor."

"I _wish_ you to hurry."

The man reappeared with two books in his hands, his eyes darting from one to the other.

"I am. Do you think it is simple, channeling so much magic in such a short amount of time?" He looked up from the texts and sighed, shaking his head, the air of urgency momentarily dispelled. "I do not want the sword or the girl to fall into our enemy's hands, Sesshoumaru. You seem to think I am trying to thwart you."

Sesshoumaru raised a silvery eyebrow, removing his eyes from the expectant face of the sorcerer, golden gaze slipping to the darkened doorway where Inuyasha appeared in a burst of activity.

"I have never said such a thing. I am merely prodding you into action."

"I do not need prodding!" The Mage exclaimed, throwing the books down on the surface of the table. "Now are you going to help me or not?"

Sesshoumaru ignored the Mage and turned to Inuyasha. "We need provisions. Clothing, food, gear. Enough to get us down the mountain. It will be quick if all goes well, plan accordingly."

The Mage looked up from his studies, his power tinting the air dark blue, a void behind him, a glimpse at his soul.

"You won't need them," he said quietly, eyes gleaming. "If all goes well you will have no enemies to run from. Provisions are unnecessary but the monastery must be warned."

The words hung heavy in the air and the three men watched each other, warily, unsteadily, and perhaps even guiltily.

"If you will take word to the Blacksmith, tell him we aim to stay, if only for a little while, he will alert the men and they can prepare, perhaps even stave off a fight. They can direct the enemies toward us and save themselves from misfortune." He looked down at his hands, the golden bracelets on his wrists, glowing with power. "I need a few things as well, you can send Kagome to my study. She knows were it is."

Sesshoumaru's eyes darted around the room at the mention of her name, his eyes flickering to Inuyasha and then back around the library, the area absent of her normal curiosity.

"Inuyasha where is she?"

The younger man's eyes widened, and hidden by the shadows in the doorway, he appeared pale and young, frightened, his amber eyes swimming with worry. Slowly, he raised a hand, hollowed and hooded by the dark night, and gestured behind him.

"Here," intoned the quiet voice, fatigued, unsure.

In the doorway, Sesshoumaru's brother shifted and allowed the young woman room to stand.

Sesshoumaru stared at her, his eyes narrowing, fixated in the necklace clenched in her fingers, glowing and humming, a gentle tingling of a bell rippling outwards from her chest.

At the sound the Mage froze over his books, his hands and fingers hovering above the lines of important words and incantations, staring at him from the pages below his eyes.

Slowly, with the utmost of care, he turned to look at the girl.

But she was not concerned with either man in the room. Her eyes were on Inuyasha, standing at her side.

"Inuyasha?"

Even through the dark Inuyasha's discomfort was visible. He swallowed hard and amber eyes traced their way to Sesshoumaru, rendered silent by the strange vibration in the air, the look on her face.

"Dog _demon_?" There was a tremble in her voice but she did not falter, and Sesshoumaru could see the return of green fury, kindling in her eyes.

It had been awhile since he had seen that expression and it had been in the absence of it that he dismantled it, examined it carefully. It was a layer of emotion, like a cloak, it was her way to enter the world and survive it and keep everyone away.

Because that was the way she had been for so long, alone and angry.

And that was what she felt, standing in that doorway, the Bell and Vajra about her neck glowing with magic he could not name and had never experienced.

"It's funny," she was saying, her eyes still locked on Inuyasha's averted ones, "that I should not understand languages and yet," she paused, her lips traveling a short path upward, a sad smile, "and yet I should understand your entire conversation while standing just outside the doorway. Funny that with what little knowledge of magic I do possess, I should know that it is the necklace in my hand that allowed me to understand you." Her eyes turned to the Mage then, softening, ever so slightly, before drifting to Sesshoumaru, her face falling into a hardened, blank expression. "Funny that his name should be so pivotal to you. Funny how it all makes sense now."

Her eyes drifted to his mouth where partially hidden fangs threatened to show, down to his hands, clawed, sharp, and deadly, to the sword at his hip, uncontrollable, mysterious, until they came back up again to meet his eyes.

"Funny how it shouldn't matter, but somehow, it makes all the difference." She turned back to the Mage, "What do you need from your study?"

The man hesitated, drawn aback by her words, afraid to meet the eyes of the warlord at his side.

"I…There is a pack on a table. You will know it when you see it." She nodded and turned to leave. "You-" his voice stammered to a stop and he shook his head, "you remember how to get there?"

She nodded once, "Vaguely," and disappeared from the doorway.

Two pairs of dark eyes fell on Sesshoumaru, frozen against the far wall.

"How?"

The Mage did not meet his eyes. He stared at a spot on the dusty floor, perhaps a place where a clumsy assistant of a different kind, had once dropped a heavy book, knocked over a bronze candle holder, and had left an indistinct, but noticeable mar, scratched and long across the marble floor.

"The Bell and Vajra symbolize wisdom. The Bell is used to dispel confusion, to purify the air. Languages are nothing more than sounds, each different and unique, but based on intelligence and understanding." He paused, his words echoing dully, voice dead and seeped in memory, longing and weary, stretching his syllables to the breaking point, "It may be of no consequence, but that the woman who first wore the Bell and Vajra was proficient in language, could, perhaps, have some bearing on your Protector's newfound ability."

It took all of two seconds after the Mage finished speaking for Sesshoumaru to realize he was facing, perhaps, a worse predicament with Kagome than with the enemies amassing on the mountain.

Somewhere between the window of his room and the hallway outside his doorway he had gone wrong, although, really, he had made the mistake long before, had made it everyday he kept things from her, and as he crossed the room and brushed the Mage aside, swept by Inuyasha, and as he slid out into the corridor in all of his graceful glory, he realized he had weakened a trust he had both inadvertently and purposefully pursued.

Kagome was not more than a few paces ahead of him, and _he_ knew that _she_ knew, he was following her, like the day she had walked away from him in his mansion, the day he had followed her down and around a staircase, trying, trying so desperately hard to convince her of his intent.

His aim to save the world.

With one single step he caught her and turned her around, peering down at her face from behind his anger.

Anger, yes, most certainly.

He was angry.

But, he could not say, with any reasonable certainty, who he was angry with. Perhaps it was the Mage for slowing their progress while simultaneously and selflessly doing all he could to assist in their quest, or Kagome, for being the damned curious girl with the ability to break walls and build them and make everything a beautiful picture even when it was not, or himself, the proud Warlord of the Western Lands, so proud and careful that he kept everything close, behind barriers that took longer to break, walls she had not even seen, obstructions that pushed her to walk away from him, to make her feel unrightfully betrayed.

She did not grapple with the firm grasp on her arm, not as he expected her to. She simply stared up at him, struggling to understand, to put away stupidity and irrational misunderstanding.

"Now is not the occasion to be angry with me. We do not have the time and I do not have the patience for it."

Kagome plucked at the fingers on her arm, gently attempting to disengage his vice-like grip on her.

"I am not angry," she murmured quietly, holding his gaze.

His eyes narrowed at her words, but he disregarded them, did not want to hear them.

"Anger is ineffective."

Kagome's expression hardened and she wrenched her arm free from him.

"I am _not_ angry, Taisho."

He was not listening. He did _not_ have to listen.

He reached out again and grasped the necklace in his hand and she halted her momentum, afraid to break the beautiful trinket, the powerful new symbol, her brows drawing close, a worried line skimming across her forehead.

And suddenly she was against the wall and he was leaning down and in, face scant inches from her own, and they were struggling not to revert to the past, not to fall back into misunderstanding and assumption.

Sesshoumaru grimaced against his own terrible need to be right and be heard and be followed and swallowed his pride for the first time in weeks and looked her in the eye.

And Kagome, below him, perhaps, to his arrogant mind, once beneath him in all the metaphorical ways, was struggling to be true to her words, was fighting against rightful anger, was struggling to be the person she had become, not so alone on the Roof of the World.

She inhaled a shaky breath and Sesshoumaru loosened his grip on her shoulder, the fingers around the chain at her neck.

"I am _not_ angry with you," she strained, almost desperately. "And I am not angry. And now, Taisho," his name on her lips jarred him backwards and the crimson edges of the frightening warlord were settled, gradually crept back to their places in his head and heart, "is not the time to go to pieces on one another. Not after all… not after all this."

Their eyes locked and all what she could not say, all that they had talked so carefully of, had circumvented and gently touched upon became a greater means of strengthened sanity.

A lifeline.

A tiny fragment of normality.

Funny, he thought in disbelief, ironic really, that he had never experienced normality before, had never been introduced to echoing reoccurrences, its comforting repetition, and that the first time he should experience it should be undeniably true and real and unnamed.

Because while he might have been the greatest warlord to ever grace the earth, he was not born and bred to understand the complicated ties and binds of souls, the fragile sense of trust and intimacy that every mortal human being reveled in. And it was in that moment, when normality made itself known, that he realized what humanity truly felt like, all of the confusion and misunderstanding, the heart breaking inability to stand stoic and emotionless and detached with all the things he had thought he was so far above, burning bright before his eyes, he was reminded of what life was.

Normality.

Humanity.

Life.

Useless, silly things.

Useless silly things that he would not give up, even as the slowly dawning realization presented him weak before his own eyes. He would not give them up because, he answered himself, some lessons had to be learned and some lessons were unfair, were unchangeable, even by one so great as he.

Some were important, even when they echoed of all the things he had once feared to become.

And because he could not coddle her, because she was not a child, because she was a different woman than she had been when they first arrived at the magical monastery, he looked her in the eyes and asked her:

"You know your way?"

And she smiled and all the hurried, misdirected vexation was lost to memory.

"I know my way."

"It is not safe… to go alone," he finished haltingly, treading carefully, choosing his words with precision.

"And that is why I do not go alone," she finished for him.

He looked down to her waist and saw the belt and scabbard; the sword seated in its sheath, missed in his perusal while he had worried about words and stupid, stupid things.

He lingered a moment, against the wall, his hand still on her shoulder, the other threaded through the thread of silver around her neck, questioningly, halting, curious, all things he rarely, if ever, was. But he stepped away and his fingers slipped from his grasp on her.

A hand wound around the hilt of the sword at her side and she sidled sideways from him, backing away, as if she too were _not_ questioning, halting, curious, had never once been. And then she smiled once more, turned and ran from his sight, her path set, her part needed.

He watched her disappear around a corner and stood for a very long moment, caught up in breathing, wondering when it had been such a clear reminder, such a hauntingly wondrous affirmation of living, the drawing of air.

* * *

Kagome ran. 

She needed to, had to, wanted the burning feeling of air in her lungs, needed it to ground her. If only to remind her that she was Kagome and her head needed to be securely fastened to her body, her mind tightly tethered inside that unmovable appendage.

The hallways, in the depth of the night, appeared each like the other, dark, ominous, depth unknown.

She should have been frightened, she should have demanded that one of the men come with her, but as she ran from corridor to corridor, she could think of nothing but the burn of air in her lungs, the giddy feeling of her head, the memory of pale features hovering above her own.

She felt invigorated, she was a rush of pure adrenaline, and a small part of her hated her idiotic joy, rushed to clamp it down and reign in the unexplainable emotions, all wrong and contradictory, burning a hole through her middle.

Because she could not explain it, and was at an utter loss to even try, she ran, and pretended like the demon wasn't after her, was not within sight, was not going to burn the world from underneath her. Because every moment that she spent with the quiet, cold warlord was a moment she both kept and cast away.

A moment she both understood and could not fathom.

Because in too many instances, they understood one another too well for it to ever sit any which way but strangely.

Strange, imperfect, and _right_.

So right that she ran, and ran, and ran, ran until she _did_ feel the burn in her lungs, until she resigned herself to the sobering time ahead of them, resigned to come back to the moment when he had looked down on her, golden eyes flaring to life as they met each other on a mutual plane of awareness, words and thoughts their platform to unexpected realizations.

Yes, when they had survived another battle with the demon, she would revisit the shadowy hallway, the long fingers curled against her shoulder, around the trinket from the Mage, she would revisit it and wrap herself in it and bask in the knowledge that she was understood and she was not so alone, and that he, in his knowledge, was not quite so solitary, so stoic and cold.

But that would have to wait, and with it the answers to a puzzling and unexpected revelation as to who he was, because she had found the long stretch of hallway open to the night air and swirling, howling wind.

She paused for a moment and wondered how she had found the place so quickly, when she had only been there once, had been confused and turned around when she arrived. She frowned and because she had no time, did not stop again to think, decided that whatever led her so quickly to the place she needed to be was benevolent and helpful, and she had not the minutes to ponder it.

As she rounded the corner to the marble corridor she was met with an icy blast of wind, so sharp that it tore the breath from her lungs, ripped watery tears from her eyes. Huddling into herself, bending nearly in half, she wrapped her robes more securely around her exposed skin, and ran again, stumbling against the force of the gale, slipping on the already slick floor, nearly impossible to gain tread on, the snow and sleet an ice sheet over the length of the hall.

When finally she made it to the secret, hidden study, she pulled the doors open, seeking warm solace in the place she had immediately loved. But the sight that met her eyes was not the one she had first seen. It was not full of odd trinkets and cozy warmth, strange magic and interesting books.

It was devoid of all these things, lacking all that she had so amazed her.

It was dull, empty, with the fading dark of the night, the blue and gold approach of morning, hidden behind angry snow filled clouds, the room was tinged a dangerously dejected color of grey, and to all appearances, the room looked as if it had never once been inhabited.

Had she not set foot in it when it radiated nothing but careful happiness, the kind that was kept hidden and tucked away, selfish and beautifully so, Kagome would have believed it to be a lie, that one place could not house so much memory.

She swallowed the lump in her throat, wondered when the skin of her mouth had been replaced with sandpaper, and traced a wobbly path to the table, erect in the center of the once cluttered room.

Extending her hand she grabbed the bag and dragged it off the table, turning her back to the desolate, lonely room, her eyes sweeping over its empty shell, and she ran back out the doors, slamming their heavy wood behind her, embracing the ice of the storm as she slipped back across the long, open hall.

She ducked her head from the wind's rage, willing herself not to listen to the howl of the gale, forcing the memory of the Mage's empty room from her mind, wishing, wishing desperately that she did not think in metaphors.

Metaphors, she laughed to herself.

Metaphors that frightened her when they did not calm her, keep her safe.

For surely, if in its light and beauty the room had felt like home, then surely, in its empty, lonely, barren end, surely, she could see death.

And as metaphors went, this one was far deeper, far darker than she cared to think about.

And Kagome was so caught up in forgetting about metaphors, that she hardly noticed when a vision overtook her sight and she crumpled to the floor, alone in the unraveling night.

* * *

"Inuyasha, find Kagome." 

"She's only been gone a little while-"

"_Now_."

A chair shifted, scraped along the floor.

Inuyasha stood, eyeing Sesshoumaru with careful precision, before turning and passing the Mage, seated on the floor, palms upturned, incandescent power fluttering around the flats of his hands, arching and arcing upwards, lit with inner light, dazzling and mesmerizing.

When he had circumvented the billowing azure light he slipped out into the hall, taking off in a vague direction, hoping to meet Kagome halfway.

Dawn was approaching, grey streaks of light beginning to line the early morning sky. Above the rocky crags and reaching fingertips of the mountain face, the snow continued to fall, light and airy. But it was not the grey moisture, or the impending battle, the possibility of bloodshed that dragged shivers down his spine, turned his blood to ice, sharpened the breath in his lungs. No, it was none of those things, for he had seen them before, all of them. Had seen them and lived through them.

It was the wind, the shriek of the gale that unnerved him, ominous to his ears.

And striding along the hallway, eyes searching- fearful perhaps, though he would never admit it- slinking from shadow to shadow, trying to ignore the warning of the wind, did he find the simple cloth bag, lying in the middle of an empty hallway.

Inuyasha stooped and gathered the pack to him, peering through the darkness, his face calm, but inside, _oh_, inside, he was wrangling the surge in his terror, was fighting the frightening ice that and cold sweat radiating outward from his middle, was standing quickly, fighting an inner battle, torn between two directions.

Run for Sesshoumaru or run toward Kagome.

Slipping the pack over his shoulder he inhaled the air and the magic and the confusion and pushed aside his worry, reclaiming his calm, falling backward into the trained Taisho son, and ran after an elusive shadow, an errant girl.

* * *

Sesshoumaru had hardly traversed half of the courtyard before he saw the dark figure leaning against a broken wall. He faced the horizon, fragmented and jagged, obscured by the valley of rock they were nestled in. On the ground floor of the giant magical edifice there was little to see, the girth and height of the looming mountain nearly swallowing the sky whole. 

He liked it better up in the air, where he could perch on a rooftop and reach his fingers toward the sky.

But that was not where he could be. He was not made for perching on rooftops, was not made to even think about doing such a thing, so he turned golden eyes to the man tied to his past, a dark reminder of days long gone.

He approached carefully, though he longed to do anything but.

Life had been easier when he could order people about, could leave when he wanted to. Life was much more complicated, now that he had a history and a past.

Rather belatedly, Sesshoumaru noted that he would not be in the predicament that he was, ready and willing to leave, ready and more than willing to fight his enemies, if his old companions would simply die and rest in peace like the rest of humanity. Rare guilt flooded his chest and he winced and took a single step closer, biting his tongue, the harsh demanding words still clamoring to be uttered aloud.

The Blacksmith, the son of the Forger, leaning, in seeming content and carelessness, on a broken wall, shook his head at the sky and smiled with broken, halfhearted strength.

"Your enemies are coming," he announced to the morning air, dark still, but growing light with each passing second.

"Yes."

"You are not fleeing, I see. I will warn the others."

Sesshoumaru inclined his head, once.

The man turned his face up to the sky and watched, waited, and then, through the early morning mist and blanket of fluttering snow, a hawk dove, folded its wings around its body and plummeted toward the blacksmith. It opened its wings wide and used the wind to slow, to flutter to a stop and land on an outstretched arm.

"You tame hawks as well?" Sesshoumaru asked, disbelieving.

The man laughed and shook his head. "You must remember, there is little work for a man who forges blade, here at a peaceful place. I am the elite Watcher, the one who controls the men across the mountain. I train the men who stand as sentries across the land. If I cannot forge I must do something useful and as the son of a great Warrior I was gifted with more than his insight into weaponry." He settled the bird on his arm and shook his head; "I suppose a knack for ordering people around is hereditary, for I do it well."

The Blacksmith reached within his dusty clothes and withdrew a small piece of curled parchment. With nimble hands he attached the scroll to the bird's leg and stepped forward, stopping at Sesshoumaru's side. With a gentle upward push of his arms, the bird took to the air, wings snapping, gliding upwards and out of sight, disappearing into the heights of the monastery, faint cries echoing through the valley and over the rocks and snow.

Neither man spoke, suspended before the morning and whatever future fate had deemed for them. Their eyes, one pair as dark as the night, the other as bright as the sunrise, watching the horizon, waiting for the sun to burst through the heavy clouds, to seep through and prove that they had entered a new day.

"Your father was a great warrior."

At his side, the man stirred. Sesshoumaru thought he saw the beginning of a smile, but he would not look to see if he was correct.

"That you are here with the Mage… They were close, my father and the sorcerer. He would be pleased, I am sure." He offered in return, his voice as quiet as the sunrise.

And to the east, behind dark rock and even darker cloud, the sun rose, lightening, but not dispelling the shadows, bringing with it a new day, and swirling along at its edges, the wind, crying its despair, a warning to all.

* * *

Kagome did not remember hitting the ground, nor did she remember sitting up, nor did she remember standing and walking. Nor did she remember mounting the stairs, or how she had come to stand at the doorway to the pillared room. 

But she did remember the reason she had hit her head, and the picture of it was still throbbing in memory.

Or, perhaps, she reasoned sensibly, it was the large bruise on her head that was throbbing, and the memory was doing nothing but being a nuisance.

The picture in her head seemed to agree, because it was flaring in her mind, nearly blotting out her eyesight with the force of its appearance.

She was gazing steadily at the pillared room atop the monastery, and for whatever reason, she had to be there _now_.

It was a good thing, she supposed, that she was already so close to her destination, as the vision in her mind exploded into her eyes, blinding her.

Through the confusion of her head and mind, her feet found the will to move forward, her hands found the strength to wrench open the large doors and she found the fortitude and balance to cross the suspended bridge between the monastery and the enormous pillared room.

Pressing a cool hand to her head she fell against one of the circular pillars, turning her face away from the whipping wind. Through narrowed eyes she peered at the area, searching for any reason she should need to be there, any important justification for hitting her head on the ground.

But there was nothing there, nothing but the snow and the clouds and the wind…

The wind.

It howled around her, pushed and prodded at her with icy, angry, insistent fingertips. It brushed past her, pulling and snapping at her robes, curling around her, whispering in her ear as if to say, '_Come this way_.'

Steeling her nerve she stepped away from the pillar she had clutched for dear life and allowed the force of the gale to pull her across the enormous floor and to the edge of the marble. And there, held up by sheer force of will and a backward surge of the very wind that guided her, she looked east and saw the sun rise through the clouds, lengthening the shadows and turning night away from her corner of the earth.

She watched, mesmerized, as the golden orb rose above the clouds, watched as its rays penetrated the dark and turned the night into a grey morning, colored with the tinge of the clouds, watched as solitary shadow, small, a tiny blot against the sun and clouds, rose at the lip of the valley she was nestled in, listened as the wind howled its words in her ear.

_They come. They come. They come. The enemies have come… have circumvented the Watchers. Up over the horizon they fly, like the wind. _

_They come. _

"Oh," was all the time she had to breathe before the dark figure, far on the horizon, disappeared into the wind and swept toward her on a wave of despair and fury.

* * *

"Call that bird back here," Sesshoumaru ordered the blacksmith, his golden eyes fixated on the eastern line of sky. 

"Why-"

"Because, they are upon us."

The man whirled around and searched the cragged mountain, eyes sliding across the endless white expanse, dark depths glimmering with surprise and fright.

"They cannot be, there were Watchers, powerful men-"

"All dead."

The man turned to Sesshoumaru, shaking his head, even as he brought his fingers to his lips and whistled, a dual screech echoing in return. Shooting down through the clouds the hawk plummeted back to their master, now glowing with faint light, red, crimson, the deepest hues of silver, and before the sweep of evil magic, just ahead of the wind, another great bird of prey rocketed over the horizon and dove into the valley they were settled in, trailing magic, pulling with him the scent of death.

But Sesshoumaru was not watching the magic rise in the son of his companion, not the plight of the birds. His eyes were searching the swirling screaming wind, watching as a dark, twisted, malevolent curl hurtled over the mountain and down into the valley, parting the clouds, rippling outward with its power to stop at the highest heights of the monastery, the magical room atop the roofs, hundreds of feet in the air.

At his side the nameless sword began to hum, its dark mist erupting forth, curling around him in an echo of warning.

His eyes narrowed and a knife of unknown fear plunged into his heart.

"_Kagome_."

* * *

In his library, alone in the dark, the Mage murmured the ancient incantations, his magic permeating the air, hovering around him like a heavy mist, a loving caress. With the last of his ability, he poured his soul, his power, his strength, his very being into his words, whispered the final syllables and waited, feeling the power wash over him, run through him, root in the golden jewelry at his wrists, before he opened his eyes and met the day.

* * *

It was a crowded few moments after Kagome realized they were too late to run, that she found herself slammed up against one of the enormous wooden poles, pushed by the dark force from the east. When she opened her eyes, she saw nothing but the glimmer of unchecked power and the twisted element of the wind. 

And standing in its wake was the dark figure from the sunrise, backlit by the rising golden orb, the grey day.

Kagome's hands wrapped tighter around the wood beneath her fingertips, dragged a deep, icy breath of air through her nose, and forcefully calmed her racing heart.

"Well, isn't this my lucky day," a woman's voice rose high in Kagome's head, strange and clear, ringing true. She stepped forward, slowly and deliberately. "Here I was sent to fetch the Protector or the sword and she walks right to me. Yes, I _am_ fortunate."

"Luck runs out fast when you face the Warlord of the West."

The woman halted, her face and features still hidden by shadow, eclipsed by the sun at her back. "How interesting," she purred, " that you should speak Japanese." A sharp laugh rose and the woman waved an idle hand, dismissing the notion of intelligence, and her sharp, dark eyes fell to Kagome's chest, piercing her there.

Kagome chanced a look down and saw the Bell and Vajra, glowing vibrantly, a faint echo of the Bell ringing in her ears.

In the part of her that was not overcome by fear and adrenaline, Kagome was silently cursing and thanking the Mage for his stupid, thoughtful gift.

Her hand fell to the sword at her side and the woman's laugh was cut short, the air around Kagome suddenly pulsing with angry, fiery force.

"Do be careful where you put your hands. I do not want to kill you."

Her fingers gripped the cool metal, muscles readying to draw the sword. The woman sprang and Kagome darted to the side, slipping with graceless unease, narrowly missing the knife as it slid across the beam she had only just pressed against. Steadying herself, she waited, hand still clutched to the hilt of her battered sword.

"I see you've been waiting for us. Has the great warlord learned his lesson? Has he taught this Protector how to defend herself? Isn't it ironic how he always disappears when you need him most? I believe last time he left you to choke to death." The silky voice dropped lower, as if she were sharing a deep, dark secret, "That's how she died you know, he left her alone, forgot her, didn't care for her. She died because he is a great warrior and he has no use for your kind.

"_The great Sesshoumaru Taisho has_ _always hated humans_."

Kagome felt the world fade away. Of all the things to say, of all that could be used to bait her, never, not for all the world had she thought his name, that forgotten, hidden name, could stop her dead in her tracks, could stop her heart, could turn her blood to fire and ice.

"_Sesshoumaru_."

She whispered the name and it fell from her lips like a feather, borne on her breath, fluttering upwards and away, weak, magical, sacred.

And far below, the great warrior heard his name uttered to the wind, gathered his power behind furious eyes and willed himself to move, muscles springing to life, launching into the air, from rooftop to rooftop, up into the abyss of the sky.

* * *

Inuyasha ran up the stairs, his heart hammering in his chest, thundering in his ears. 

He did not know what Kagome was thinking, leaving, heading up to the one place Sesshoumaru would not want her to be alone.

Hell, he thought, taking the stairs three at a time, _he_ didn't want her up there either.

After teaching her swordplay he had seen how clumsy she was, had seen it and currently feared for her life. He did not like the thought of her, all clumsy parts of her, balancing on a bridge with no railings, sitting in a room with no walls. It was like tempting the devil, placing her in such a precarious situation.

And it did not help his racing heart that she had decided to wander off just as they were preparing to leave, to outrun their enemies.

But, Kagome Higurashi did not just wander off. Inuyasha knew this. But he didn't want to know, didn't want to think about what could make the young woman disappear from a hallway while a demon was at their backs.

Didn't want to know but had to find out.

As he ran, he felt his hand creep, unbidden, toward the rosary about his neck, the pit of his stomach empty and fearful, a dark knowledge creeping along his spine. His mouth was dry; he could not catch his breath. Something was wrong and Kagome was gone and the world was flashing before his eyes. Because as much as he liked her, and he did, mostly when she wasn't a giant thorn in his side, he knew that the reason she was so important was not because she was good and kind and funny and infuriating, but because for all he knew, she was the one and only thing they needed, the last key to a mystery five hundred years running.

And as he ran his mouth muttered the words of his heart, "Be alive, be alive, be alive, be alive, Kagome, stay alive," because Inuyasha Taisho did not need visions to know when the worst had happened.

* * *

"It's interesting," the woman hissed, sidling closer, holding the knife before her, "how little changes in five hundred years." 

Kagome took a step to the side, her eyes flickering to the bridge, so far away, her only path to salvation.

"It's fascinating that you should be helpless and the warrior who is meant to protect you, _destined_ to watch over you is nowhere to be found."

Kagome took another step and the woman darted forward, her movement a blur, nothing but vague colors and opaque shadows.

She was the wind.

The knife flashed in her hand, cut across the forearm Kagome raised, splashed the floor with vermilion blood.

Hissing through her clenched teeth she stumbled to the side, edging ever nearer to the drop of the floor. Kagome did not dare take her hand from the sword at her hip. It was her one and only defense, a poor, weak defense, a defense she could hardly use, but it was sharp and she was determined to live.

"Pretty little girl playing sword. Sesshoumaru is a fool. And you will die because of his inability to see reason. You will die because you are weak and there is no room in this world for heroes."

In the back of her fuzzy, hazy, fractured mind, Kagome wondered when she had ever been considered a hero, when she had ever acted like one, and decided that whoever the woman in front of her was, she was seriously misinformed of Kagome's character.

Kagome would have wondered further, perhaps would have fallen into the trap of words laid by the enemy before her had the clarion ring of metal, the hum of the nameless sword not shattered the spell around her, cleared her mind of doubt and confusion.

From below, rising through the air, she felt the hum of power, the call of the weapon she was tied to, and the man, the man who wielded it, surging through the air, as if he had grown wings, had seen into the future, knew her mind.

And Kagome Higurashi, the one time museum assistant, the Protector of the nameless sword, the girl who had once cowered before a museum director, the young woman who had lost her family, who had lived for so long in shadow and angry uncertainty, saw the moment where the adversary before her was distracted by the thrum in the air, the gathering power of the great Sesshoumaru Taisho, turned on her heel, and with all the strength she possessed, launched herself off the edge of the room, the shriek of the woman following her descent downward, the twisted elemental winds scratching at her back, attempting and failing to snag her and keep her fast.

And Kagome plummeted through the icy air, flying past the red rooftops and through vibrant prayer flags, a flash of verdant green, a small blink of life, hurtling toward the ground.

* * *

Inuyasha burst through the doors in time to see Kagome's decision flash across her face, in enough time to see her green eyes slide sideways past the woman holding her captive, in time to see her bolt across the floor, green robes flying high behind her, in time to see her foot leave the steady, reassuring affirmation of the floor, in time to see her muscles clench as she threw herself into the open air, in time to see her turn in the air, to see her fall from the heights. 

"_Kagome_!" Her name ripped itself from his throat, and he was at the edge of the bridge, wide eyes watching her falling form, watching as she missed the jutting edge of a rooftop, watching as her arm hit, nearly snagged the string of prayer flags, watched as Sesshoumaru, darting from rooftop to rooftop, a white blur, reached, with deft fingers and arms, _reached_ through the infinite distance, hurtled upwards through the air, reached, strained, stretched, for the Protector, almost, almost-

And Inuyasha was torn away from the falling form of the girl and the saving grace of his brother when a blast of demonic wind thundered across the open air and threw him to the ground.

When he raised his eyes to his enemy crossing the narrow bridge, reaching for the sword at her side, he raised his hand, and in one graceful sweep, pulled his magic out of his soul, unleashed it to exact his revenge, to distract himself from the falling hope, plummeting in a green blur.

* * *

Sesshoumaru ran across the tiled rooftop, his golden eyes searching for his next secure foothold, his senses traveling upward, his sword screaming to the air. 

Below him, the monastery swayed, hidden by partial clouds. In the early morning light he could see the uppermost towers and walkways, darkened by the angle of the sun.

He could not think past his feet, past the metal in his hand, past the all-consuming need to protect. He bent low and launched himself off the end of the rooftop, twisting through the air, expanding his long form, his feet hitting with enough force to drive the tiles upward into the air from the next roof he landed on. And then he was up and running again, upwards, careening through the air, using each foothold and wooden beam as a point to gain better leverage, soaring past the windows, touching the ball of his foot down on the slippery slope of a balcony, hands gripping the wooden beam of a buttress.

The air was ice, the sun was breaking through the clouds, and he was focused on the distant, highest point he could reach, eyes narrowed, mind tapered to a hard crystal point.

And there, against the faint glare of the sun, he saw her appear, saw her graceful leap, the moment in time burned into his memory, forever would she be caught in the air, robes about her like benevolent wings, before she plummeted, pulled by gravity's force, down, down, down.

He crouched at the edge of a rooftop, clear air an inch from his form, gathered his power in his hands and legs and eyes and shoulders and mind and heart and with the sheer force of will, arced upward, angled against the buildings and the beams, the last few rooftops, and _plucked_ her out of the air.

And the world, though very wrong and evil in so many ways, was alright in that moment, even as they soared through the air, even as his awkward rescue brought them hurtling through the weak shoji screen of a balcony, even as they lay in a huddled, bleeding mess, and the world carried on in its own cruel, fated way, everything was alright.

* * *

Kagome felt the impact rattle through her entire body, felt the wood creak and break as they flew through the fragile screen, felt the piercing pain as a shattered fragment of the wood thrust through her shoulder, impaling itself deep into her skin. When she hit the floor, her vision went black, even as her mind buzzed for her to wake up and move, to get up, to go, go, go, go- to get up and out while she could. There was an enemy at her back, one at least, more for sure, and she could not afford to bleed out all over the tatami mats. 

Outside her head, she could hear her Protector saying her name, his voice hard and sharp and angry, his fingers plucking at the painful intrusion at her shoulder.

But outside her head there was pain and she was not in much of a mood to deal with it.

It was not everyday that she threw herself from building tops in the hope that someone would save her. And it was not everyday that someone did. So, she was perfectly content to stay unconscious, if only for a little while, and bask in living, in being alive and not dead on the bottom of the monastery floor.

It was ironic then, as she lay holed up in her mind, avoiding one pain, that another sort of agony should dawn before her inner eye.

The face of her mother, the smell of her perfume, the way her curls had fallen about her shoulders, the memory of paint stained fingers, vacant and distant, nothing but a memory, but in her state, in her confusion, it felt very, very real, and in the midst of all that was happening to her, Kagome felt her heart break, shatter into pieces, and watched as she kissed each cherished fragment goodbye and let go of everything she had held so close.

And in her mind her mother smiled and disappeared.

And Kagome screamed when Sesshoumaru Taisho wrenched the broken, fractured wood from the hole in her shoulder.

All was confusion and blurry, aching pain.

She opened her eyes and was suddenly very aware of her world, hypersensitive to every sensation, the smells, the feel of the air on her skin, the blood dripping from her wounded shoulder, the look in Sesshoumaru Taisho's eyes as he maneuvered his glowing fingers around her shoulder.

Kagome's uninjured shoulder moved and her hand reached out, fingers curling around the wrist of the hand closed over her bleeding skin.

Sesshoumaru's eyes were momentarily pulled away from his task, and as she stared into his face she saw the almost invisible smile pull at his eyes and smooth the hard corners of his mouth.

"I thought you knew your way," he said, golden eyes flickering.

Kagome blinked at him, abruptly aware of his proximity to her. Something twisted weakly within her chest and she said, voice low and serious, thick with controlled agony, "I do."

Warmth flooded her shoulder and she felt the uncomfortable mending of muscle and tissue, slowing closing about the hole the broken wood had left behind. He finished quickly and pulled away, immediately drawing his sword and examining their surroundings. Kagome winced as the last pangs of sharp pained died away and brushed the broken wooden splinters still clinging to her form, hesitatingly beginning to rise to her feet before the man reached out and dragged her upwards, pulling her along with him.

They had fallen through a screen on a balcony, somewhere on one of the upper floors and where entering one of the long, empty hallways when Kagome reached out and snagged the man's long robes.

"Sesshoumaru."

The man went very still, back rigid, freezing at the sound of his name from her mouth.

Under the warm glow of a flickering lantern they paused, if only for a sliver of a moment.

When finally he turned to face her, she saw hard, angry lines drawn in his eyes and on his face, and she remembered his words from a lifetime previous to that moment, '_Given his end he would not want his name known_.'

But she didn't care what sense of honor and duty had caused him to forsake his given name, to consign it to memory. She didn't care if by her utterance she was breaking an unwritten law, was infuriating him, was reminding him of the past, because he was Taisho, he was Sesshoumaru and they were of the present.

She shied away from his gaze, staring at a shadow in the floor, and then because her courage had not failed her, had not left her yet on her journey, she raised her emerald eyes and met the whirling golden depths and said the only thing she could.

"Thank you."

He watched her for a moment, unreadable, stoic and frightening, like the man he was when she was only just beginning to know him, but it passed and he was acknowledging her, even in his silence, lowering his head in an imperceptible nod.

And then he snagged her with his capable hand and they were running down the corridor, ignoring the monks who appeared in a flurry of fear and confusion, pushing past the men who tried to stop them, skirting the holy men on their knees, praying in the hallway.

It was all slow building chaos to Kagome's eyes, and she felt nothing more than anxious acceptance, cold and complete.

"Where are we going?" She called, breathless.

"To collect the Mage and Inuyasha."

And through the magic rising to defend the holiest of places, they broke through, finding the central staircase, descending, swords in hand, time crushing down and rushing in, fate as elusive and distant, like the rising of the sun and the sullied clouds hiding it.

* * *

Inuyasha rolled to his feet and drew his sword, attempting to keep his balance as he slipped precariously close to the edge of the narrow bridge. 

The woman, the denizen of the demon, the wind demoness, Kagura, approached him with quick agility, and surprised by the fervency of her attack, the arc of her blade, the crash of her power against his, he stumbled back again.

She was fluid and smooth, she used her magic to her advantage, bent the wind with her will, parted its curves and zephyrs, moved with the element from which she was born.

As the sun broke through the clouds, finally parting the snow laden mass above, she smiled at him, ruby lips the color of spilled blood, eyes black, tinged with vermillion.

He could not gain any purchase on the narrow walkway, her attacks, constant, hard, assured, pushed him backwards, wrenched him to the side, threatened to push him over the edge, to follow Kagome's descending path. He gritted his teeth and dug his feet into the smooth marble floor, holding his sword against hers, bracing himself against the wind that threatened him.

They were locked, blade to blade, body to body, and through his blood his fury snarled, his vengeance called. With all of his strength he pushed back at the demoness, pooled and channeled his magic, erupted in a fiery storm of golden blaze, the loops of rosary skimming over his hand to fall about his chest, one long strand, all of his power straining, shooting skyward, an arc of light.

And with the tiny foot space beneath him, he found the strength to leverage himself, to hook his blade and move his muscles to move forward, and knock the woman, his enemy, off the bridge, to watch her, through the golden wrath, as she plummeted to a rooftop below… and lay prone, momentarily unconscious.

And Inuyasha strained against the dark essence of his blood, the demonic, the black depths and shadows, the demons within, strained, and overpowered primal need, animalistic urgency, and secured his binding beads around his neck, recollecting himself, breathing heavily, sinking to his knees for a brief moment, gathering oxygen, before turning and vaulting back into the monastery, searching for his brother, searching for the mage, and praying to no one that the Protector lived.

* * *

Sesshoumaru burst into the library, halting suddenly, Kagome sliding to a stop next to him, arms flailing as she balanced. Before them, the Mage stood, calm and composed, hands clasped behind his back, dark eyes twinkling, a small, knowing smile spread across his amiable face. 

Sesshoumaru studied the man, his eyes narrowing to glowing slits, immediately tensing, sensing the strange, powerful fluctuations in the man's aura.

"Good," the holy man said pleasantly, hands rising in a greeting, a blessing, "you are well. It seems you were correct, Sesshoumaru, about my Watchers. You have no idea how much it pains me to say that."

The warlord smirked.

"But, now, we have enemies to fight and it is not an appropriate time to say 'I told you so.'"

He laughed sharply, sheathing the nameless sword. "It is always a good time to prove oneself correct."

The Mage scowled, losing some of his bright, good-natured mood. "We must ready ourselves for the attack. The monastery has been warned. But it is dangerous to run now. You must slip away at the critical moment, when all forces are otherwise occupied. _All_ forces."

"And how," Sesshoumaru asked, striding further into the room, "do you suggest we do that? I am quite certain the adversaries descending the mountain have come in search of us. There is no possible way we can stay here and not be engaged by their forces."

The Mage smiled dreamily, a sigh dragging itself behind the baring of teeth, rising in his shoulders, curling out into the morning, "Oh, I suppose you will have to leave the distraction to me. You, oh, greatest warlord, will engage their leader or leaders in battle and Ash and Miss Higurashi will wait for you to kill them all, will wait and keep me safe while I perform my part of the task, and then, when you come to join us, we will work from there."

Sesshoumaru frowned, a dark shadow crossing his eyes. He stared down the Mage, searching the man's eyes, searching for what he was not saying, for what he was so adeptly hiding. The man blinked at him and turned his attention to the young woman at his side.

"Miss Higurashi, if you will give me a moment with your Protector."

Kagome glanced at Sesshoumaru and he nodded, waving for her to wait outside the doorway. She hesitated, casting a confused look at the monk, before turning and slipping into the hall, leaving Sesshoumaru and his surviving companion, all the heavy secrets falling between them, weighing them down, pulling them under a sea of old grief and solitude.

* * *

Kagome paced outside the doorway, chewing on her lower lip, her eyes darting around the corridor. Occasionally a monk would sprint by, trailing an essence of frightened magic, or would stalk close to her, before she would flash her sword, shinning by her side. 

She was not afraid anymore. Falling from a great height seemed to have imbued her with a soul that she had not previously owned. She did not have the time to fear, did not have extra energy to divert to the what ifs, to worry about the possibility of death and injury.

And that was when Inuyasha appeared, gasping for air, sweat stained, and burning with restrained power.

Kagome looked up as his figure appeared around a sharp corner.

"Ash!"

He stumbled toward her and nearly collapsed into her arms.

"Are you alright?"

He nodded and sank to the floor, hanging his head between his knees.

"Just need… to catch… my breath."

She knelt beside him, divesting him of the pack she had dropped in the hall, the pack he had found and carried back to her. She stared down into his face, ashen, strained.

"You had to use all of your power again, didn't you?" She inquired knowingly, tone hushed.

Wordlessly, he nodded and leaned against the wall, calming himself, steadying his errant power.

"I don't know how we're going to get out of here," he said when he could finally speak. "I can _feel_ the power of our enemies. It isn't even here yet, but its coming, and its powerful, its huge." He met her eyes, darkened with truth, "It's elemental magic, stripped, diluted, manipulated, and it's coming in force, coming for us. It screams of death. If we make it out from behind these walls it will catch us on the mountain, it will swallow us whole." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, breathing deeply. "Oh," he gasped, opening one eye to look at her, "And you can call me Inuyasha. I'd hate to die and not have you know my name."

"We're not going to die," she admonished quietly.

He said nothing, closed his eyes again, winced in pain and breathed again.

Kagome stared into his face and saw, for the first time since she had met him, the truth of fear, the reality of dark power, and suddenly, failing from a great height did nothing to cure her of her own dread.

* * *

"What is it?" 

The Mage sighed again, losing his smile, bright light dimming from his eyes.

"I must tell you something… in case… in case all our worst fears are recognized… in the off chance that I fall victim to our enemies."

Sesshoumaru scowled at the Mage. "Inuyasha is more than capable of defending you. And I am certain his newest student will inflict a fair amount of damage should it come to that. The dramatics are wasted on me, holy man, tell me what you want to say."

"It's about the girl."

And suddenly Sesshoumaru was no longer annoyed, was staring directly at the sorcerer, was waiting with bated breath to hear the end of the great mystery that had plagued him since first he met Kagome.

The morning was stretched tight, and all around him, above and below, to every side and in every small corner, there was the sound, the flurry of activity, the smell of fear, the buzz of confusion, the surge of power, and through it all he was waiting, watching, hovering on the edge of the great unknown, the Mage before him, cradling the last little secrets of an enigma, a paradox, a confusing young woman and her unknown, relentless power.

"What is it?"

The Mage drew in a heavy breath, hesitating, his expression fearful, as if speaking the words, giving voice to the mystery would unravel the balance of thing, would pitch them into uncharted, darkened territory.

Pulled taut, vibrating along a narrow center, the monastery swayed.

He released his breath and the last of his restraint left him, a dying spark from his genial eyes.

When their gazes met and locked, he uttered a few simple words, rocking the base of the earth as he spoke.

"She is the Shikon Jewel."


	30. Indigo Soul

_Ehh... oops... slight typo mistake at the end of the chapter... er... maybe you might want to re-read **toward the end**... _

* * *

"To die would be an awfully big adventure."  
- Pan, _Peter Pan_

**Chapter 30**

**Indigo Soul**

There was a long, pregnant silence, heavy, full of so many thoughts that the air grew thick, laden with difficult, incredulous words, silent, unable to be spoken.

A sharp laugh finally tore its way out of Sesshoumaru's tense throat, cascading about the air, echoing strangely in the large, empty library.

"She is _what_?"

The Mage sighed and raising a hand to his brow, pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, a dark grimace momentarily contorting his features. He exhaled sharply and dropped his hand, gesturing vaguely.

"She is the Shikon jewel! Oh, how do I explain…"

"Using words is always an excellent place to begin."

But the Mage was not listening; he was holding his hands in front of his face, staring at them, shaking them, as if the answer to everything lay between them.

"She unconsciously channels power. It was very obvious from the moment I used my magic on her, if not from the moment I met her. She has no ready control over it, does not even realize when she does it. Each time I used my sorcery, I plucked away a layer of her conscious mind and found the void, the expanse of wondrous sensations and emotions, elements and places. She is, to put it simply, a manifestation of the Shikon Jewel. No, she is not the thing itself; she does not house it in her soul or her body. You cannot slice her open and find it, but she is a...a guide, if you will. It is why she has visions, why, I can assume, she is linked to the sword, why she is linked to you, and why all of it, _all of it_, is linked together.

"Without her, you will not find the jewel, you will not gain the power of your sword, and you will not win this fight. I can assume that if she were to die the jewel would be lost forever. She is imperative. She must not ever fall into the hands of your enemies. Her life is more valuable than mine, than yours… She is, above all, the key, and through her you will find the end of this great mystery."

In the back of his mind, Sesshoumaru Taisho was laughing, cold and hard, was shaking his head and throwing up his arms in defeat, was, in his mind's eye, absolutely bewildered with Fate. But outwardly, he was nothing but the stony lord, digesting unpleasant, and perhaps- only time would tell- unwelcome news.

"She is a metaphor," he said slowly, steadily, his voice straining over each word, "she is a metaphor for the jewel." He looked up at the Mage, watching him with steady, perceptive eyes. "She embodies the traits inherent to the magical object. And," he continued, taking a step closer, drawing up to his full height, " I am sure there is more to it than just that, is there not? It is much more complicated than friendship, wisdom, courage, and love," he spat the words, as if his mouth was filled with poison, as if he distained the very idea of such emotions, and in a way, in a very real and true and horribly jaded way, he did.

"So, she is the key to the jewel and my sword falls to the background, is pushed out of the forefront because Fate wishes me to take the guide, the Protector, the damned, infuriating mix of ancient magic that she is, and follow a path that has been laid before me. A path that I have been preordained to walk."

The Mage lifted a silvery eyebrow, face inscrutable. "This is nothing new, Sesshoumaru. _You_ came to _me_ and told me of the supposed fate."

"I have not forgotten this. I am merely reiterating my absolute disdain and general loathing for the idea of it."

The Mage frowned, looking for all intents and purposes, completely vexed and exasperated.

"What else?" Sesshoumaru snapped at the man, "What else do you have to tell me?"

The holy monk shrugged absently, shaking his head, "Nothing really, that was about it."

"You have spent the better part of a month studying and holing yourself up in a library to tell me that? Just that?"

The Mage thought for a moment, his dark eyes drifting to the ceiling of the library, rimmed with shadows, before returning his gaze to the furious warlord.

"More or less, yes. I can't tell you much else, because I know very little. It isn't as if the Shikon no Tama is written about in every tome and text. Information on it is not readily available. Most of what I came up with is pure assumption, based almost entirely on what I felt from her. Yes, I studied and read and looked through thousands of words, but that was to eliminate all the things she was not. I had my hunches as to what she was and was not. And," he said softly, "I had a bit of sorcery to do for myself, for other things."

Sesshoumaru was no longer watching the Mage, was looked down at his sword, checking its binding to his waist, testing the smooth fluidity if its movement in and out of its sheath, "The Bell and Vajra?"

"That was one such project, yes."

Sensing the hidden undertones of the man's voice, the guilty reverberation, he looked up, catching and pinning the monk with his eyes.

"What are you not telling me? What was it that you needed to finish working on, what spells were you casting before we came here?"

The man deftly avoided the probing glare and reached out to gather a few wayward papers threatening to fall off of his desk. "There are many things that I do not tell you, but I assume it is fair, as you have never deigned it appropriate to tell me all the things in _your_ head."

Sesshoumaru frowned.

All true.

Damn it.

"Then, perhaps it would be in our best interest to ready ourselves for our enemies rather than play this idiotic game." He turned on his heel and strode out of the room, curtly shoving the library door out of his way and sweeping out into the hall.

Before him, in the middle of the large corridor, Inuyasha and Kagome knelt, speaking in low tones, murmuring to one another, each with a weapon in hand, ready for the attack that was coming, ready for their enemies to fall.

They looked up when Sesshoumaru entered the hall, standing before them in all his impossible glory, the leader, the warrior king. He regarded them carefully, assessing them for injury, catching their apprehension on the draft of the hallway, watching their emotions play out across their features and in their eyes.

"Stay with the Mage. I have blood to spill."

He turned and stepped away from them, instantly folding inside, burrowing deep and low, finding and calling on restraint and power, on memory and skill.

He was nearly lost inside his head, when a gentle tug at the sleeve of his robe drew him short, shocked him out of his focus. He looked down and into the bemused face of the girl, raising a dark eyebrow at him, a smile touching the corners of her lips.

"That's hardly a way to wish anyone luck," she uttered blandly.

Sesshoumaru snorted and glanced back down the hall, watching as the Mage helped Inuyasha rise to his feet.

"And I'd appreciate if I heard what was happening from you," she added gently, "before you say things like, 'I have blood to spill'. It's quite frightening for Inuyasha, I think, to hear you say things like that. I don't think he can handle it." She was smiling now, biting her cheek to keep from laughing. Sesshoumaru allowed himself the pleasure of one tiny smirk before his brow drew together in morbid concentration, the seriousness of the situation they were facing driving off his hidden smile.

"They are coming. Many of them. Can you feel it?" The smile faded from her face and her eyes grew distant and hazy, gaze focused on an indeterminate point in the distance.

"I don't have to," she murmured, looking upward into his face again, "I already knew they were coming."

His face hardened, drew a sever line of dark and heavy thoughts, "How?"

"The wind told me, on the roof, before I fell...er… jumped."

Perhaps he would have been surprised by this statement had he not already known of her impossible ability to sense things and to, much to his chagrin, accidentally harness and use great power. It seemed only natural that she should hear a warning on the windswept mountains. Of course she would, this was Kagome.

"Then you must know we have little choice but to fight." She nodded once. "Stay with Inuyasha, stay with the Mage. But, above all, stay alive."

She laughed a little, though it was devoid of happiness or pleasantry, "I do not need much incentive not to die."

"Good. I will be back."

Their eyes caught and held for a brief flicker of time, before he turned and disappeared into the gloom of the hall, leaving the girl to stare at his retreating back, listening to the howl of the wind, feeling the pressure of magic, rising above them, the unwavering knowledge that there was nowhere to run to and they would win or lose by blood alone, tumbling around inside their heads, a heartbreaking melody of disintegrating hope.

* * *

Inuyasha sighed in relief as his magic settled beneath his skin. Like a lumbering, dangerous beast, tethered by a thin, flimsy chain, it shambled back to the recesses of his soul, settled in the darkest corners, and waited for the moment he would need to draw his power out again, to snap the delicate restrictions, to unleash the beast within. 

He steadied himself on the Mage's arm and let go, the world tipping and swaying dangerously before rooting back in its proper place, his eyes and ears immediately open to his surroundings.

His amber eyes searched the space they stood, caught Kagome, alone in the midst of the hall, staring into the gloom, and called out her name, snapping her out of her thoughts. She turned and ran toward the two men, slowing to a stop, staring up at them expectantly.

"What's the plan?"

"I must get to the top of the monastery, I must use my magic. I have a very vague and very tentative plan that may or may not get us out of here alive. You must stay with me. We are stronger together than alone."

Inuyasha winced in memory. "We're going to the top?" He raised a hand and pointed toward the ceiling, "the very top?"

The Mage reached out and impatiently grabbed the pack from around the younger man's neck, nearly choking him as he wrenched it up and over his head and neck.

"Yes, of course, where else would I be talking about?"

Both Kagome and Inuyasha muttered "Damn it," and, "Shit," respectively, as they each reached for their weapons, securing the fastenings, tightening the belts and checking their bindings, apprehension circling invisible above their heads.

"Come," the mage waved them forward, "we have little time and many lives are at stake."

Inuyasha exchanged a glance with Kagome before he ran ahead of the Mage, searching the corridors for enemies, be they men or monsters.

They had made it as far as the central staircase when they heard the unnatural whine of the wind; felt the air inside the monastery still with horrible acknowledgement, before the wind surged forward to meet the buildings, pushed its malevolent, angry force onto the holy place.

The pressure was too much for the windows, the small cracks between walls, the brittle shoji screens, the wooden beams held up by magic alone. With a sickening crack, with the shatter of glass, the eastern side of the edifice rocked, exploded in a barrage of light and sound, shards of glass flying into hallways, entire floors erupting in an explosion of wooden fragments, floors cracking and heaving under the powerful attack of wind and dark elemental energy.

Inuyasha stumbled against the wall of the staircase, blindingly reaching around the corner of the doorway, hand connecting and fisting around the robes of the Mage, hauling him around into the relative safety of the area, Kagome pulled along with him, a wrinkled, glowing hand fastened around her dirty, dusty, green robes.

The holy man shrugged off Inuyasha's hand and stepped away from the girl and the man, his back bowing as if he were under a great weight. Fascinated, Inuyasha pulled Kagome out of the way as a great throb of rising power steadily pulsed around the Mage, rippling the air as if it were water, disturbing the already abused atmosphere, his power increasing the pressure of the unknown enemy force.

The man turned and met Inuyasha's eye.

"Go."

He did not need to be told twice. Pushing Kagome in front of him they ran up the stairs, closely followed by the Mage, radiating azure power.

Outside, through the broken windows they passed, they could see the gathering clouds, pushed from the east, caught up in a whirlwind of elemental power, descending toward them, drawing nearer with increasing force.

They were almost upon them.

Inuyasha bared his teeth in furious defiance. Already he had been attacked, had nearly lost control, had been surprised into using most of his power, had barely contained it as he escaped.

He could only hope the Mage's plan would work, could only hope Sesshoumaru would be a great enough distraction, could only hope until… there was nothing left to do but run.

It was not a breath after he touched upon the idea of running, of abandoning all, that the silence descended, and he knew it was too late.

He paused at a broken window, staring down at the rooftops and landings, the walkways and exposed terraces, and far below, the wall of the monastery, breached by faint beings, crawling, slipping, slinking through the air, appearing not twenty feet before him, descending out of the sky and the gale, wisps of wind and moisture floating away off of their solidifying forms.

His eyes registered what his head refused to.

The Wind Clan.

They stood, tall and straight, dark and powerful, perched on beams, crouched on jutting poles, hanging, swaying gently as they gripped buttresses and landings, listening, their element swirling around them, churning, readying for another attack.

At his side, Kagome paused and he turned to her, voice thick with tension, "Go! Don't stop! We don't have time!"

She ran on and Inuyasha followed, tearing his eyes away from the horrifying scene, an entire clan, the glint of swords, the promise of death.

* * *

Sesshoumaru stood in the middle of the empty courtyard, eyes searching the east. 

He could hear the voices on the wind, could feel the rake of enemy eyes, could feel the touch of curious, ethereal fingers, searching him, prodding him for weakness.

Unfortunately for his adversaries, he had few, if any to exploit.

He waited, his shadow stretched long in the early morning sun, the grey shape falling behind him, gently disappearing as dark clouds rolled over the mountain and above the valley, looming overhead.

Above him, the monastery held fast against the dark thrust of magic, the ripping of black winds.

And then, there before him, over the wall, on top of roofs, in the middle of broken window frames, descending out of the moving air, his enemies appeared, black spots against the white of the mountain.

They crouched low, stood tall, leaned and leered; he watched the glisten of their eyes as they each turned to look at him, grim smiles and sneers twisting shadowed faces.

Sesshoumaru tipped his head back, his eyes catching sight of the enemies, vague dots all about the monastery, upwards to the highest heights.

He did not count their numbers, did not estimate them. He was not a stupid, silly man, he did not need to know the amount of adversaries he would slay, it did nothing to his ego or to his pride, to count the sweeps of his sword or the hoards of warriors he cut down. It was unimportant, trivial.

And so Sesshoumaru waited, watching quietly as the wind and storm above him whirled and shifted, pushed down against the monastery, and around his solitary figure. His perceptive eyes caught the tinge on the wind, dark and black with so much malice and hatred, twisted, black power.

It was a wonder the whole air was not dark with the power of the clan looming before him.

With the ease of a man who was not facing hundreds of angry, vengeful wind spirits, Sesshoumaru drew his hand up to his side, and in one easy, lethargic, smooth pull, drew his sword, sweeping it back behind him, Daichi-sama ringing true and clear as it scraped past its sheath, arcing in a streak of power.

His hand and arm held steady, his white robes fluttering around his raised arm, the wind hissing its surprise and excitement, weak muttering flickering in his ear.

Slowly, with great ease and terrible disinterest, he lowered the blade of his forefather's sword until the tip rested gently in the swirling dirt beneath his feet.

And then he waited under the darkened eyes of the clan he had angered, the dynasty that had ascended the mountain, had drifted past the Mage's watchers, had hummed over the ancient protective spells of the trails, and before him the air rippled and parted in a sea of black-grey color, and there, appearing out of the element that had been twisted into something other, the servant of the demon lord appeared.

The air washed off of her as if she were born from it, twisting and disappearing into the swirling black mess that was her power, hovering just behind her form. She had forgone the intricate and detailed clothing he had always seen her wear, had opted instead to adorn the colors of a clan, a house that was not her own, but, he could see in her eyes she had lost none of her superiority, her belief that she would win, would conquer all for the master who lorded over her.

But to his satisfaction, she looked a little worse for the wear, and he caught the clean sword swipes unthreading the black kimono about her shoulder. He would recognize _those_ cuts anywhere, as if they were thumbprints, or a familiar face.

Inuyasha had never changed his style of fighting, and it was now as it always had been, quick and fast, with little thought other than cut, and bleed, and stab, and survive, and-

"It seems you have already met opposition, Kagura. Perhaps it would be best to forgo the fight you will lose in favor of keeping your life?"

The woman sneered, but behind her careful mask of indifference her eyes bled red.

"It was nothing I could not handle, but thank you, Sesshoumaru, for worrying about me, it warms the heart. Too bad I'll be cutting yours out shortly. Not that you need it. A great warlord has no use for such things. In any case, it should do the trick of killing you, even if you don't use it."

Sesshoumaru said nothing, he had never been one for talk, and it seemed such a silly idea to change now, in the midst of a very promising battle. His fingers closed around the hilt of the sword, readjusting carefully, preparing, readying himself for the attack that would befall him.

His eyes drifted upward, waiting for the movement that was tipping over a hesitating edge.

He almost laughed aloud.

Fools.

Brute force was nothing compared to cold, hard accuracy.

And if there was anything that Sesshoumaru was, it was cold, hard, and accurate.

He smiled grimly, eyes dancing with heavy, golden light, and with a tiny clench of muscles, the barest echo of movement, his sword tip rose off the ground, dust and dirt falling from its pristine tip and his lips were moving, his smooth voice heard above the whirl of noise above and around him, "Then let us not waste anymore time."

He saw the spirit move before the action registered in the adversary's mind. Launching through the air, drawing his sword as he catapulted for Sesshoumaru, a dark blur against the towering red of the monastery, his enemy leapt.

The warlord pivoted on his foot, brought his sword up into the air, swept Daichi-sama in a wide circular arc above his head and sank to his knee as the essence of the enemy tore in two and swept past him, his life force dissipating into the wind, cleansing itself, purified.

His left hand splayed into the dirt, fingers balanced carefully, head bowed, sword tucked under his arm, legs curled, and he waited, eyes trained on the ground, listening to the deafening silence, and then, before a breath could fall, a wretched scream tore out from the demoness Kagura.

"_Kill him_! Bring me the girl and the sword!"

Sesshoumaru smiled into the ground as a hundred black shapes sprang into the wind, rocketing down toward his bent form.

Gold swam along his vision and erupted into the sky, arcing upwards, shooting through the tumultuous air, rocking the base of the ground, echoing across the mountain, sliding boulders from great heights, and in the center of it all, the Warlord raised his sword and split the world in two.

* * *

Kagome pushed past a fumbling monk, her hand closing around the railing as she used it to leverage herself, to haul herself up each stair. 

Behind her, she felt a swell of power, swarming around Inuyasha.

When she looked over her shoulder, he was drawing the first loop of the rosary over his head, his hair shining a bright silver, his eyes lightening by fractional shades.

"Don't stop," She heard him demand, breathless, "They're coming."

Her legs were beginning to burn, strained with the effort of running so fast and hard, her lungs were already afire, and her mind had abandoned her about the time the eastern side of the monastery exploded.

Kagome stumbled as a rush of wind swept past them, knocking her into the railing at her side. Through the giant columned room, a great whirlwind seemed manifest, licking past them with increasing certainty, pulsing with angry need.

And above and below them, dark shapes emerged, spun from the element intent on sweeping them away.

She was suddenly pulled back and away as the Mage stepped in front of her and Inuyasha stood a few steps below her, his sword drawn, his hand poised as if to pull another part of the rosary over his head.

They moved like lightning, were one with the wind, their opponents.

Suddenly, there was a clash of swords and Inuyasha was pivoting on a narrow step, attempting to push back the two wind spirits assaulting him from below. And behind her, the Mage thundered with power, his hands rising from his sides, dark azure orbs of flickering light gathering and expanding in his palms, a radiating power disturbing the dark elemental power pushing at his magical barriers.

Kagome drew her sword and hovered, indecisive, afraid to get in the away but too stubborn not to help.

If only she had something to throw, she thought vainly, if not ridiculously. Perhaps she could knock a few of them out if she had an arsenal of bricks.

She did not trust her sword skills in such close confinement; Inuyasha was having trouble as it was. She did not want to cut off an appendage of her teammates; they might never forgive her.

So, Kagome settled for backing against the wall and keeping out of reach, though it didn't do much to quell the furious war cries of her inner feminist, it did a lot to reassure her practical side that she would not be hacked to bits… just yet.

She wasn't fully aware of how useless and frightened she was until she heard her voice break through the sounds of strife and battle, muttering a litany of, "Shit, damn it, shit, shit, shit." Which, by all accounts was a perfectly acceptable reaction to the surging power of the Mage, solidifying in dark glory, pulsing, threatening to explode before them.

Her eyes widened and she threw up her hands to shield her face as the man stretched his arms wide and brought his hands to the front of his chest, the dark power laced through his fingers, expanding and exploding in a flurry of sapphire power.

The air rocked with the silent explosion and all too soon a hand was on her arm, urging her forward, her ears still ringing noiselessly. Inuyasha pulled her up the stairs and she stumbled over the bodies of the spirits, slowly disappearing into the air, tracing a cool breezed pattern across her back and through her hair.

"What in the bloody hell was that?" She yelled into his ear as they ran.

"That," he said breathlessly, holding his bloodstained sword in front of him, grinning like the fool he was, "was magic."

Kagome would have rolled her eyes and demanded a better explanation had the stairs beneath her feet not given out as a loud explosion rocked the room, shattered the remaining windows and pitched the three companions forward into the steps.

From a hallway below them, spilling out onto the stairs, more adversaries appeared, each like the next, each dressed in black, each carrying the same vengeful expression, as if each were a perfect copy, as if they were nothing but their hatred, so simple and horribly furious.

The wood cracked beneath their weight, bowed and threatened to collapse. The Mage was up before them, his robes snapping around his frame, his hands glowing so brightly Kagome could no longer see his fingers. As the wind spirits ran up the stairs, launched themselves into the air, flew over the gap in the middle of the tunneled room, the Mage muttered words under his breath, words that even with the glowing Bell and Vajra hanging around her neck, Kagome could not understand.

The stairs lurched, and she slipped into the splintering hole beneath her, the bucking and bending of wood, the collapse gathering beneath her. Scrambling for purchase, she hauled herself out of the slipping wood, away from the surging power beneath her.

The air became charged as two forces conflicted with one another, the azure power of the magic and the diluted grey power of a faceless wind kami, a level below. Kagome crawled up the stairs, daring to pull her eyes away from the place her fingers gripped to peer through the splintered wooden rails, eyes searching for the source of the power, a man, _there_-

Balanced on the edge of the rail, arms extended, grey power swimming out from his fingertips, surging toward the stairs, bending them, forcefully pulling the three companions into a trap, perhaps into death, and the Mage, struggling to hold back the spirits assaulting the stairs, the magic from across the room.

Kagome stood and pointed, yelling above the mayhem, "Inuyasha! There!"

The man, who had been adding his own power to the careful, crackling barrier of the Mage, turned and looked at her, his eyes sliding to her finger, over the rail and to the distance between and below, until he spotted the enemy.

Stumbling out from his spot next to the Mage he sheathed his sword and pulled the second loop of holy jewelry over his silvered head, claws and fangs erupting in blinding light. He raised his sharpened appendages to his shoulder and dragged them through his shirt and to his skin, bright crimson blood welling beneath the long scratches, dripping off his fingertips.

And with an almost careless flick of the wrist, he brought his dripping hand up towards his face, turning it, examining it, before gesturing across the space, pointing a reckless finger at the deviant, blades of gold light falling down and across, ripping the enemy, slicing him, pushing him off the rail, ending the spell.

Before Kagome could catch a breath, the Mage fisted his hand, erected a permanent barrier and turned toward them.

"Go."

And onward they ran, until the blue wall expanded and exploded upward, destroying the stairs on several flights, blocking off a partial path, momentarily stalling their combatants.

"We need to get out of the main stairwells, follow me." The Mage had hardly spoken the words before he darted into a corridor attached to the middle, columned room, his deep robes melting into the darkened hallway.

With an absence of grace and ability, Kagome stumbled after him, her shoulder connecting with the doorway, Inuyasha following closely behind, pausing long enough to raise his hand and gesture, a weak, flickering light descending over the doorway, a momentary wall of magic.

They ran the length of the hallway, three abreast, their ears and eyes open for the sound of enemies, the movement of adversaries, the flicker of elemental magic.

"Listen to me, the both of you." The Mage did not break his stride, but his voice held a warning, one that captured her splintering attention and pulled it back, centering all her attentiveness on his every word. "They are strong, the Wind Clan. They have sent nearly, if not all of their clan after us. They would not sacrifice so many numbers if they did not believe they would win-"

"What are you saying?" Inuyasha cut in, following a pace behind them, smoothly altering his course as they darted down a passageway perpendicular to their path.

"They are going to use great and powerful magic. Magic that would require their entire forces to employ. They are wasting lives now, attacking us with little thought or plan. They are wasting their magic, but they are doing it for a purpose. By all rights we should be dead, we should be in their grasp. We may be great warriors but we are outnumbered to a degree that even we cannot realistically fight and win against. They are pitching their weak at us for a reason. Even as we run I can feel them just behind us, pooling their magic, using the wind, the pure element, diluting it and twisting it. If all goes awry you must get the Protector out of the monastery and down the mountain. Do not wait for your brother. He would agree with me on this."

Inuyasha's response was low, but she heard it above the rattling of metal around the Mage's wrists, the sharp breathing in her chest.

"I understand."

If she had not been fleeing, exerting her heart to strenuous, painful extremes, it would have stopped, would have frozen in her chest to hear such bleak and morose words. But she could not stop and could not allow the despondency to sink in, she had to run, had to survive, and all for the sake of the damned world.

A world that didn't know any better. A world that had no idea of danger and demons and Wind spirits and magic.

As they passed by a row of large windows, Kagome turned her head and caught her reflection, pale and waning, tired, eyes wide, mouth pulled in a firm line, and then through the vague image she saw shadows move, had enough time to yell a garbled warning before she pitched forward onto the floor and rolled away from the explosion of glass.

And in her hazy, tumbling mind, she was wondering exactly how many wind spirits were needed to kill four companions, because as each second went by she could swear their opponents multiplied, grew tenfold, closed in a little closer, their power a little stronger.

And as she crawled to her knees she drew her sword, because really, she had never much liked being helpless, and helpless she never was.

* * *

Sesshoumaru stood in a circle of shredded black kimonos and pure circling air, Daichi-sama relaxed in his grip, pointed toward the sky. 

It seemed as if there was no end of the foolish, poorly trained adversaries, and he was beginning to tire of such inane, wasteful games. Granted, he _was_ supposed to be distracting their enemies and was doing a splendid job, as when each opponent fell another would take his or her place.

At that moment he was hesitating, considering staying where he was or engaging more powerful enemies, standing away from his battle, watching him, waiting to see if they were needed.

Far above him he could sense the turmoil and confusion of the monastery, could feel the spurts of power and the winking out of life as both enemies and holy men fell in battle. But as much as his mind wished to follow the progress of his tiny Protector, his woeful brother, and the mysterious Mage, he could not, because a presence was fighting his way to his side, slashing down black enemies with the quick thrust of a sword.

The blacksmith appeared out of a dusty, gloomy corner, brandishing a sword and battered shield, raw power accompanying the practiced moves of his weapons.

He met the enemy swords with his own, parried, dropped to his knee, a step to the right and he slashed, raised his shield to a wayward, off kilter swing, pivoted, neat, accurate, the son of a warrior, parted a wave of enemies running toward him, cleanly executed the sweep of his sword.

Sesshoumaru would have taken a moment to further study the form of the Forger's son, would have had a man not stepped forward, black kimono flying high and wide, parting like black wings, large and wild, dark and endless.

His sword was black, almost identical to the fallen wind spirit, Fujin, the one time leader struck down by a little museum assistant and the face of a cliff. He met Sesshoumaru's eyes, and there was a dark, assured declaration in them, one that beckoned the warlord forward, promised him a difficult fight. At Sesshoumaru's side, the blacksmith appeared, sporting a deep gash across his shoulder.

The warlord's eyes remained trained on the enemy before him, but he addressed the Blacksmith, tense and ready, sword held in his arm, shield hanging from the injured arm.

"I do not need your assistance. If you want to use your skills find the Mage and the Protector of my sword."

The man nodded once and was gone, slipping into the monastery, a red trail of magic permeating the air he darted past and through.

"So," the elemental kami before him drawled, raising his black weapon to his shoulder, perching it there, an insolent smile twisting on his lips, "this is Sesshoumaru Taisho, the being who struck down our leader."

Sesshoumaru narrowed his eyes, ignored the sweep of wind as it blew silvery hair into his face, let the churlish laughter of the opposition fall into the backdrop of his mind, blinked away the snow and ice crystals captured on his lashes, tightened his grip on Daichi-sama as his left hand poised to draw the nameless sword, met the elemental's eyes, his chin rising, his face devoid of thought, emotion, introducing himself as the prince of a land, the King of a realm, the only affirmation he would ever give, written in his eyes .

"I am the clan leader now. Now that you have killed our commander. And I am here by request of your greatest enemy."

Sesshoumaru, who was not at all impressed with the discourse of the man before him, nor the haughty superiority of the entire clan, merely dropped his hand to his side and released his sword, gracefully pulling it from its place, swinging it out and foreword, pointing it toward his enemy, who, at the warlord's abrupt movements, took a small step backward, black eyes widening fractionally, a crease appearing in his forehead, dark eyebrows raising at the speed at which the warrior moved.

A single word fell from his tongue, dripping with impatience and cold disdain.

"Enough."

And he stepped forward, broke into a smooth run, his body skimming low, his nameless sword before him, his familial sword behind him, and rushed for the offending being, churning the air around him.

The swirl of magic, gold mixed with heavy grey, clashed and parted, just as the swords of the two adversaries did, a moment later, sparks flying where metal hit metal, where magic of forged steel and a warrior's way met the sorcery of a natural world, twisted and wronged for selfish purposes, dirt wafting and slipping upward as feet moved and slid foreword and backward across the courtyard.

Sesshoumaru bristled as the magic of the Wind Clan trembled along the air, as the gale threatened to rip him asunder, reaching deep within he called forth his power, a vague strand of white and hazy gold, anchoring himself, throwing up cautious barriers and careful walls.

He would not be unseated, would never be thrown to the ground.

He never lost his balance.

Would never meet the dirt under his feet.

Above all things he knew this, because pride was great and he was not below admitting that flaw of arrogance, because in many ways, it was his greatest attribute.

So, with the assured knowledge that he _would not fall_, he concentrated on nothing but the swords in his hand, the dark movement of his adversary.

He was quick, he was fluid, he was everything the wind was said to be, and unlike the clan leader Sesshoumaru had first met with, the man before him did not fill himself with vanity and accomplishment, did not believe himself a warrior in all ways, did not fathom himself better than the great Warlord of the West. He was not fixed with delusions of great power, was not convinced he possessed them.

He was a warrior, he was better than Fujin, concentrated, and for all his steady, abrasive words he was not a man to be handled lightly.

Sesshoumaru sidestepped gracefully, watching as the black sword of his enemy passed through the sleeve of his fluttering robe. He spun, locked his swords around the dark metal, gritted his teeth and flexed his muscles, but the sword slid, the new leader pulled away, retreated when he had to.

All around them, magic glowed, waging a war of sorcery around and through their weapons.

They faced one another, watching carefully, a black eye, a golden one, dark hair and silvered, opposites and almost equally matched, almost, Sesshoumaru thought as he braced his feet against the swipe of the sword, but not quite.

Daichi-sama caught the downward stroke of the blade, the unnamed sword arcing upward to glance off an exposed arm, dragging ebony lines through the air, splatters of black blood dotting the dirt and sand below them.

The leader parried. Each blow glanced off the alternating sword in Sesshoumaru's hands, the sound of warfare tumbling high above them. The wind spirit dodged the smooth curve of the blade, raised his injured arm and pulled a second sword from the element he lorded over, holding each weapon before him, circling Sesshoumaru with measured intent.

The remains of the clan seemed willing to let the battle play out, but they hovered, stark shadows against the scene, dark eyes glistening as they watched the pass of swords. They were waiting for Sesshoumaru to stagger, waiting for the right moment to converge.

No one played fair in battle, in war, not when so much was at stake, and they were waiting around the edges of the skirmish, waiting to take the prize.

The sword.

If he fell they would have the sword.

If he fell…

They would have Kagome.

The swords of his enemy appeared through the mingling magic, black kimono flying behind the man's darkened features, his crooked nose, his fiery black eyes. With little difficulty, Sesshoumaru blocked, attacked, stepped back, one foot forward, two to the side, slid, slipped gracefully toward the ground, his knee brushed the dirt floor, a sword sliced over his head, the air hissed as it pressed against his barrier, his fingers tightened around the nameless sword, his golden eyes slipped upward, and he rose, darted to the side, knuckles brushed the ground, parting the magic and the wind, his eyes bore through the black depth of his adversary's gaze, he smoothed his way upward, crossed his swords, blades of sharpened metal snaked their way outward, connected with the throat of the wind lord, pulled his swords up and away…

And neatly, almost mercifully, he sliced off the head of the wind clan's best warrior.

Silence fell.

And through the horrified, collective inhalation, he watched as the head of his one time competitor hit the ground, bounced once, twice, rolled away into the darkened corners of the silent courtyard, leaving a bloody black trail in its wake.

On the ground, the body shuddered once, and then, as if it still were able to draw a breath, appeared to sigh, before dissipating into the wind, lightening the tinted, diluted shade of the blackened element, twisted before his eyes. Sesshoumaru snapped his wrists and sent the blood off his swords, examining their edges as if he could not be troubled, as if an entire clan had not gathered all their murderous rage and bent it toward him.

Satisfied with his study of his weapons, he lowered them and looked upward, waiting, a gleaming smile reflecting the dull light of the sun, hidden behind whirling purple clouds.

* * *

Kagome was forced against the wall with the stupendous power of the wind. 

It crushed her chest, sucked the air out of her lungs, and vaguely through the difficulty of breathing, in the back of her mind, she was thinking that it was all, all of it, the entire messy battle, was just a bit one sided.

Before her, Inuyasha flashed gold and she was suddenly free and able to breathe.

It was lucky too, because the moment she was released from the oppression of the wind, she threw herself to the side and a knife passed by her ear, burying itself in the wall she had been captured against. With as much grace as could be mustered rolling around on a glass covered floor, Kagome got to her feet and hoisted her sword up, eyes flashing in all every direction, searching for the next attack.

It descended not a moment before she had adjusted her world to an upright position, jarring against her weapon, throwing off her balance.

In the blur of movement, in the black that were their opponents, through the azure haze that was the Mage's magic, through the grey streaks of Inuyasha's sword, Kagome saw a woman appear, dark eyes trained on her face, watching her, eyeing the sword in her shaking hands, sneering, measuring up her many, many weaknesses.

The point of a knife scratched along the clumsy rise of her sword and Kagome was pushed back, nearly losing her balance against the expertise of the being before her.

She was small and lithe, moved with her power, was one with it. The small blade in her hand winked against the grey light filtering into the broken windows of the hall, glimmered and whispered threats to Kagome's saturated, sluggish mind.

Probably, she thought to herself, as the woman advanced, striking out with the weapon, taunting, teasing, Kagome would look back on her first real sword fight and laugh.

Because really!

How laughably awkward.

A sword against a knife.

And still she was outnumbered, outmatched.

It was simply ridiculous.

The woman moved, fast, faster than Kagome could see, she raised her sword, blocked, nearly shut her eyes with fear and immediate response. With what little training she had, with instincts all but shoving her learned reactions out the window, she swung her blade out and down, catching, tearing, and _pulling though_ something, something resistant, something that, a moment later, would cause a wind spirit to howl in pain and surprised agony.

To Kagome, all was chaos.

She held her sword, dripping with black blood while an ashen faced being staggered away from her, clutching a deep gash across an arm, was quite odd to her slowly functioning mind. The battle around her was nothing but a whirl of muted colors, noise dull and echoing far, far away.

A hand on her arm tugged gently, firmly, and when that did not bring her around from the scene before her, the bite of nails, the penetration of her flesh suddenly shattered her distant haze and brought her back to earth.

The sounds were deafening.

She could _hear_ the magic straining around them. The sorcery of the Mage, the power of Inuyasha, the magic of the monks scattered throughout the torn monastery, and most certainly she could feel the pulsating force of their enemies, pushing against all the protective barriers of her companions, rushing down the hall, the wind at its most fearful state.

Kagome looked up into Inuyasha's eyes and saw everything she felt, curling and rising high in her chest and throat, all the fear and confusion, the haze and the clawing, gripping necessity to live and survive, buried deep, reflected darker in his steady gaze, and suddenly, as suddenly as his grip on her had brought her back into the world of the living, she was alive again, alive and ready to move, ready to run, ready to dodge a blow and be lucky and breathe and find away to defeat their enemies and hold her sword and-

"Are you alright now?" He asked this quietly, conspiratorially, as if to save her from the scrutiny of an outside party, a judgmental overseer.

Through the sheen of sweat on her face, the trickle of blood down her temple, she was able to smile but unable to speak. Inuyasha nodded once, as if to say he understood, as if to say, it was all right, it was ok to get lost and then found, it was ok, just be alright, be alright.

And she was and that was all that mattered.

"Move," the Mage ordered, his voice like the edges of the blades they carried.

They had no time to look behind, to look ahead; all they could do was carry on to the next hallway, the next skirmish.

Kagome ran again, and this time, when her lungs burned with constriction, she welcomed it, because she was alive. She had fallen- no, she had thrown herself, thrown herself from the top of a monastery and lived, and wasn't dead yet and oh, she wasn't going to die, not today.

They scurried along darkened halls, slinked into the shadows. Inuyasha led the way with Kagome close behind, the Mage bringing up the rear, glowing faintly, in no mood to speak other than to issue orders, to point them onwards and upwards.

It was frightening to see the loss of good humor from his eyes. She hardly knew him and it unnerved her, settled her in a fantastic dreamlike state. This couldn't be real, she screamed to herself, it couldn't be, it all happened so fast, the surge of battle. Her fingers tips caught along the edge of a wall and she passed by another broken window. Her eyes slid past, looked for threats, she stepped away and froze.

A small cry tore from her lips as she stumbled back toward the broken hole in the wall, the splintered wood and glass, nothing but a gaping, yawning negative void to the sky outside. But, despite its grotesque and messy shape it gave her a perfect view of all that was below, and there, through the twisting mass of rising levels, through a mashed wall and a punctured roof, she could make out the distant form of her protector, white and glowing, his power visible even from the height she stood, from where she stood, leaning out the broken wall.

While Inuyasha's desperate grasp of her arm, the pain of his claws digging into her skin had brought her mind back from the unfathomable place behind her eyes or from wherever it had dug itself into, the sight of the man, the being, the creature who had changed every damned thing about her life, stuck a sharp pain in her heart and suddenly, unexpectedly, her mind and her soul were both returned to her.

And she ached, felt the rising stab of emotion, lost to fear, sinking into her heart.

A choked noise rose in her throat as dark shapes moved against him, tested his power, raked over him, perhaps even landed blows, she could not tell, not from her position so far above. Dread and anger split her chest in two and she was alight with more than the will to live. The cold calculation fled from her mind as her fiery temper, her blazing eyes returned and she remembered and recalled what is was to care for people, to worry about something besides her own sorry life.

And for a brief moment, she hated the man far below, hated him for warping her, for getting inside, for reminding her that if he left now, if he fell, she would be alone again. Hated him for being the one person who had found a way around her and through her, because if anyone was at risk of death and destruction it was he, far below, swords swinging through the air, power reaching out to Kagome, even though she was sure he had no idea where she was, the little Protector of his nameless blade.

"Stupid man," she heard herself say between clenched teeth, heard herself say, childishly, bitterly, selfishly.

"Kagome, damn it!"

She turned from the torn wall to see the Mage and Inuyasha, pausing at a corner, beckoning her to come to them, twenty feet from where she was.

She ran to them, passed a junction of hallways saw the conglomeration of enemies at the end of them, and rushed past, pretending as if she had not seen them, as if they would not have to stop to fight again, as if she were not forcing away thoughts of Sesshoumaru, far below her feet, outnumbered and alone, so very much alone.

* * *

Kagura was more a thing than a being. 

She was not made to function as messily as humans or even as securely as spirits, elementals, kami, powerful otherworldly beings.

She was incomplete in so many areas she often wondered how she could not be human.

But where humans served their own selfish needs, she served no one but her master, and at all times, his whims were above her own. She was a half demoness, if that. She was a creation, she was a mixture of things and therefore of nothing in particular, though she identified best with the wind and used it as she saw fit.

And that was why she trusted no one to find the girl, the Protector of the sword, no one but herself.

She was strong, certainly, strong and fearless, easily angered because she was imperfect, prone to a righteous belief that she could win even when overpowered, but even with her misfortunes and her assets there was nothing she did better than slink and sneak and bend the rules. She was not a woman of war, had never once seen the lines of real battle, the kind of engagements that were quick and short and silly, the kind of wars that raged over land and spilled the blood of ordinary men.

She had no honor, or so she told herself, because really, honor was wasted on the weak, or on those that could afford it. She could not afford it, and so chose to shirk it. She played by no man's rules because men, all of them, all men, all males, be they demon or mortal, were too proud, too infatuated with their own rules to see how perfectly advantageous it was to do what she was so adept at: sneak, slither, hide, connive.

She was the black widow, waiting to spin her web, waiting to appear when all the chips were down, when all was busy elsewhere.

She did not play by the rules because she had been made to break them, had been made to fall through the cracks, was nothing but an imperfect, unfinished creation.

And so she flew through the darkened halls of the monastery, hurried forward, her very essence and being trained on the sounds of strife, power, loaned and dark, glowing in the magic around her, the air parting to allow her through, the sadistic glimmer returning to her eyes as she spotted her prey, not far ahead, running through the halls, but slowing, tiring, each battle stripping them of their precious energy.

And Kagura slipped out a broken window, crept along ledges and shadows, waiting, watching with crimson eyes, biding her time until she could whirl in and snatch away the hopeful future.

* * *

"Shit," Inuyasha snarled, staring up at a broken staircase, twisted and mangled, literally rammed up into itself, blocking any upward movement. 

The Mage stepped closer, his eyes narrowing, a deep frown piercing his face, lancing over his brow. "I believe the spies from my monastery are trying to hinder our ascent. No doubt to spare their own lives, the cowards. As if it will do any good…"

Next to the man the girl stirred, shifting back and forth on her feet, her sword clenched in a shaking hand, eyes darting around them, worry etched along her face, mixed with dirt and blood, ashen fear.

The Mage cast another furtive glance above them before stalking past Inuyasha, brushing him with his shoulder, knocking him to the side. He strode to a large picture window, open to the air and the untainted wind.

The silver haired man joined him, placing his hands on the smooth ledge out to the world. "Can we take the rooftops?"

The Mage shook his head, distracted, his power humming louder, rippling in the still air, so different from the infected element used by their enemies.

"We cannot," the man finally murmured, one hand moving to touch the jewelry about his wrists, as if to comfort himself, "they can use the wind too easily outside the monastery. Already they harness enough inside to inflict serious damage. We cannot risk stepping foot outside the wood and stone."

For a long, agonizing moment both men stood steeped in despair.

Kagome glanced around her uneasily, afraid that they would be accosted should they linger too long. Her eyes trailed over the features of her two inadvertent protectors and against the trepidation in her own heart she seat her jaw and cast away gnawing doubt.

"We can't wait. We'll have to find another way up, one that isn't blocked by you're magical traitors and one that doesn't lead us outside. We can do this. We're only a few flights from the top."

Two sets of eyes looked down into her face, surprised and cajoled by her sudden brave words, the determination in her pale face.

Inuyasha nodded once, curtly, as if he had never doubted their resolve and moved past her, his hand descending to touch her shoulder, an affectionate, thankful gesture that disappeared before she realized he had given into such an impulse. He slipped past and worked his way around the mangled staircase, leaving her to stand before the Mage, eyeing her with wary uncertainty.

She blinked at him and then, and because she had nothing else to give him, she smiled. Indecision fled from his eyes and she watched as the light, the absent warmth flooded back, the small impish flash of teeth relieving her dread, if only a little.

He inhaled sharply as if caught by a sudden reminder, a memory.

"You remind me of someone."

Kagome laughed gently, let the tiny sound of amusement escape her because it seemed that somehow he reminded her of someone, too. But then, she admitted, he probably only reminded her of himself, the happy, care free Mage, a mischief maker not unlike herself.

"I seem to be eliciting that reaction a lot lately," she replied simply.

The Mage eyed her face for a moment more before patting her on the shoulder and taking off after Inuyasha, pulling her along.

"You could make quite a warrior, Miss Higurashi," she heard his voice lift and catch as he stumbled over broken pieces of stair. "It seems to come naturally to you."

"About as natural as ice dancing," she replied, hurriedly skimming by twisted metal and broken shards of glass.

As they rounded a corner, following Inuyasha's dark form the Mage raised an eyebrow at her, studying her from the corner of his eye. "Are you proficient at that activity?"

Kagome sniggered, winding herself as she attempted to break into a jog again. "I can't even keep my balance when I'm off the ice."

"Ah," the Mage said. Kagome assumed this made more sense to him than it didn't and rolled her eyes downward to her sword, secured at her waist.

She was about to speak, to say something, anything silly and inane, when she felt the floor beneath her feet rock and sway, a surge of power rocketing through the floor beneath them, buckling and pressing at the wood, following them, tracking them, waiting for the perfect moment-

And then the world shattered beneath Kagome's feet.

* * *

Inuyasha had kept his heart and head separate from his battle and was finding it difficult to remain optimistic when cool, hard facts kept interfering with his buoyant hopes that they would survive their ordeal. The voice in his head, so devoid of optimism and conviction, sounded a bit too much like Sesshoumaru's, much to Inuyasha's dismay. 

So wrapped up in smothering the fact that he would probably die, he missed the warnings flashing along his spine and swimming though his magic, missed the tremble that passed along his awareness, missed it because he was running toward a hopeful salvation, missed it because he did not want to stop and fight, wanted to make it up those last few flights to their destination, wanted, wanted, wanted-

Suddenly, all too late, the world shifted and Inuyasha could feel the gathering sorcery, could almost reach out and touch it, sweeping past him, brushing over his skin, manifesting far ahead of them, blocking their path, jumbling together, stitching, morphing, forming. Creating something that was hidden from their eyes, something huge and gargantuan, something slowly solidifying below him

It felt as if hell itself had opened its gates and had let out all that was malevolent and putrid roll out into the world.

He skidded to a stop, slipped, hand extended to the tatami mat, spun around and his eyes went wide.

"Kagome!"

Her name tore itself from his throat before he even registered the full force of the attack, before he even saw the grey magic weave along the floor at her feet.

The girl, running behind him, stumbled, reeled backward, slipped and fell as the floor buckled, just as it had on the central staircase, cracking and glowing with unchecked power. She scrambled, crawling back and away, her bright eyes wide with confusion and horrible, mind numbing fear. Next to her, extricating himself as quickly as he was able, using his magic to dispel the clawing sorcery of their enemies, the Mage was reaching, snagging her in his arms, pulling, pushing his sorcery, gripping, clawing, wrestling her free…

Attempting to pull her to safety until the force exploded around them, shattered the floor, rocketed through the layers of wood and stone, dissolved, and through the evil, twisted element of the wind, the Mage and the girl disappeared, sinking beneath the floor as it caved, a choked cry sounding out as they were tugged down.

Inuyasha sprang, had not time for thought, was caught up in the whipping power of the wind, clawed his way toward the yawning hole and fell through the air to land on the floor below, to sprawl helplessly in the midst of a giant, endless hallway, huge, gaping, arcing overhead.

To his left there had once been a wall facing east, but there was nothing now. Nothing but broken, fractured pillars, skeletons of window frames, and the sun shining through the unnatural clouds, winking through the twisted, mangled former wall, blinding his eyes, taunting him with vague familiarity.

In a brief moment of confusion he rolled to his feet, crouched, drew his sword, let his magic wash over him, protect him, and saw that he was horribly outnumbered, was surrounded by a circle of dark clad beings, each with a winking black sword in hand. He cursed under his breath, let his eye slide to the side to see the Mage standing, power gathered in his palms, a brief distraction and protection.

They were waiting, their adversaries, were paused, tense.

It was not until the wind died down, pulled the last few scraps of debris from above, threaded through his hair and whipped past his eyes that he saw it, saw it manifesting slowly, barely visible, comprised of the element of their birth, a hulking mass, just outside their tight circle around the three companions.

In a flickering moment, one Inuyasha could not dispel from his mind if he branded it with fire and ice, forcefully ripped it out with his own two hands, in that faint, flickering moment of time, he saw the light from the sun glance off and through a shinning beast, the wind moving as if captured within behemoth bones and claws and muscles and eyes. It was not solid, the hulking, shifting mass, no, it could not be, because it was made of the wind and the wind was anything but touchable, but it was very real, and it filled the corridor, stretched halfway to the ceiling, was a nearly invisible beast of titanic size and fury.

Frozen in place, Inuyasha's eyes roved over the edges of an animal he could not readily make out, took in the move of the air, the unknown enemy before him, saw the brief glisten of bowing fangs, saw the long slim, intricately woven rug beneath him slide, and then rip asunder under the force of a single clawed arm, watched as it was tossed away and out the broken wall, as if it were nothing, as if it were weightless.

He moved. Darted forward, shoved the sorcerer out of his way, grabbed Kagome and pitched to the side, attempting to break through the tight wall of bodies. The Mage gestured with his hands, his fingers curling into a fist, his body recoiling, his magic flying forth to knock against the enemies surrounding them, to scatter them like leaves.

Inuyasha fell to his primal side, crouched, ran and sprang as if he were feral, as if he had lived his whole life on his hands and knees, the thundering of his heart cascaded above all things and a single thought split him, stripped him to his basest fears.

He had to keep her safe. Had to get her out.

Kagome was wrenched away from him as they impacted with bodies and magic. He stumbled, his sword was jarred from his grip, he rolled, felt the slice of a blade pass over his head, slip over his unkempt silver locks, braced himself against the floor, stripped the rosary over his head, erupted in white light, bared his fangs and searched with crimson eyes-

She was going to die.

Kagome had drawn her sword, was backing away from advancing enemies she had no hopes of wining against, was eyeing the huge vague shape of the windy beast, looming near, lumbering closer, was against a wall, was assaulted by a dark shape swooping from the winds, appearing from nowhere.

If there was anything Inuyasha regretted it was not killing that damn, twisted wind demoness while he had the chance. He should have run her through while he perched on the upper rooftop, should have sliced her head from her shoulders.

But he hadn't and she was bearing down on Kagome, was, in the confusion, going to sweep her off and throw her to the beast.

Behind him, The Mage was fighting, was summoning the power he needed to conserve, was holding the clan at bay, was sinking down to a knee as his power threatened to overwhelm him, and Inuyasha reached, stretched, could not see where the beast was because the sun was in his eyes, he was being swarmed by darkness, by cloth and claws, could only see hints of shadows as I passed by a patch of sunlight, as talons moved and clicked, forged of the wind itself, but sharp and deadly as the element could never be, and he reached, strained, raked his claws down in attempt to get to her-

And was knocked aside, hit a wall, slumped to the floor, held by magic he was too tired and worn and surprised to fight against. He tried to move, tried to roll to a stand, but his body was not as quick as his mind, and he could do nothing but stare through amber eyes as Kagome raised her sword, held it in front of her, dropped into a simple stance- feet even, weight distributed, good girl- slashed a warning to the air, the promise of a fight, was driven back and to the side, was picked up by her robe fronts and tossed, carelessly, like a rag doll in a hurricane, to lay in a huddle, hurt mass in the middle of the marble floor.

She was strong and she was quick and she was a good student if she was anything, because she was not down a moment before she had rolled to a crouch, looked upward and caught sight of the hazy, indistinct outlines of a brute made of magic and anger. Her sword had fallen from her grasp, lay woefully at her feet, and she was defenseless, was crouched, was rooted in the spot, the insistent, terrifying winds scorching past her small shape.

The Demoness raised her fan, idly flipping it against her face, a smile curling her crimson lips upward into a dark sneer, "Take her."

And the beast moved and time slowed.

Kagome had no time to escape, could not react, knew she was in the hands of her enemies, knew the attack, the final capture was coming by the way the air screamed with triumphant elemental power.

And through the disorder and disarray, Inuyasha watched as a dark blur slid over her, with ease and grace, rolled her up in a tangle of arms and sword and rounded, dented shield, and was swept off out of the attack, the rush of wind, the dark magic swirling questioningly against the spot she had huddled into.

And the power moved, turned, fixed its sight on her savior, strained and grew, an unseen claw, an arm, a paw, a simple force reaching out to the man who had saved her, was protecting her with his futile weapons.

The individual, dark and smooth, crouched, raised his shield, strained against the descending slam of a furious attack, red sparks of magic flying off the rounded metal of the buckler. A vermillion glow hovered around the prone individuals, hesitant and strangled, undiluted, pure, raw.

Untrained, untapped magic of a craftsman, the Blacksmith.

The zephyr, the maelstrom that was the formed creature, pulsed outward with power, flaring to life, darkening, its visible shape and outline appearing before the companions, eyes blazing red, a collective hatred of an entire clan rooting behind animalistic eyes, hovering inside frenzied magic.

Without fear, without hesitation, the Blacksmith, a man Inuyasha had never once met, had only heard reference to, had only recently been told the vague history of, turned and handed his blazing shield to the girl, drew his sword and stepped forward, faced the monster he could hardly see, and was washed over by the power of the Wind Clan, disappearing into a swirl of fiery red and diluted grey.

* * *

Sesshoumaru did not have the luxury of time. He was out of it anyway, had spent enough minutes on the monastery floor, and in all rights, he was becoming very, very angry. Which, assuredly, was not a good thing for his control, which, at the moment before the black clad bodies descended upon him, was splintering and fracturing along its carefully delineated lines. 

He almost sighed aloud at the pure idiocy of it all.

And then he sheathed his heirloom blade and spun his nameless one up to his flawless, pale face, a golden eye glimmering with malice and malcontent. That same eye blinked once as he brought the sword closer, focusing his sight through the rounded missing center, his power gently fluttering along the blades edges, rushing, surging, merging together, one side from his forged sword, the other from his center, golden and etched with white.

At his feet the dust stirred, whipped into a frenzy, began a tentative dance upward, a swirling vortex twisting around his white form, unraveling its intensity, fighting the raw power of his enemies, even then, as he stood still with the sword to his face, flying through the air and over the uneven ground of the courtyard to kill him, black swords glimmering of victory.

With a last little sigh of power, his sorcery unleashed itself, and in a stuttering moment where all was bathed in molten light, he twisted the blade and pointed skyward. With his gesture went his power, uncompromising, a tidal wave, a barrage that could not be fought.

He remained anchored, his face tipped to the purple sky, his power humming upward, and then, when he saw the faces of his enemies approaching his windy barrier, he twisted, brought the sword back to earth, plunged it into the hard dirt floor, and circled both hands over the cool hilt.

Golden light slivered, fractured, and broke, thrust into the ground it traveled outward from his kneeling form, split the earth upon which his enemies stood, and with a final pause, exploded in a burst of fiery golden sorcery, ripping, tearing, burning away all who opposed him.

It took a single breath to draw his power back through the ground, into the sword and back into his hands to settle under his guarded eye. In the aftermath of his magical prowess there was nothing but a thin, hazy golden mist, yellow orbs of light floating listlessly, sparkling with satisfaction, drifting by his skin, warm to the touch.

Where his enemies had stood a moment before there was nothing but cratered earth and fractured plots, land separated and thrust upward and downward, like rifts from an earthquake.

And Sesshoumaru, who could never be bothered to feel remorse, trailed an appraising eye over the damage he had dealt, found it satisfactory and swept through the remaining haze of his power, through the purified souls he had extinguished and into the darkness of the monastery.

* * *

In the seconds before the strange mass in front of her crushed Kagome under its unseen weight- crushed her or captured her, which it meant to do she had no idea- Kagome was wondering, idly, what she had ever done to deserve a severe pulverizing by some mythical, nearly invisible monster. She was running through all of her transgressions, most involving few if any past mistakes, most merely memories, when it dawned on her that her life, very short and concise, only recently interesting, was flashing before her eyes. 

And she was not at peace with death, would not go quietly, would not willingly-

And then all her brave words were shattered into a million pieces as a force of strength and certainty appeared as if from the heavens, to wrap around her, tumble her over the ground and lay her, dizzy, flat on her back.

The world dipped and swayed for a mind numbing minute and then the dark shape above her crouched and in a single breath, summoned reverberating power, arcing it neatly over them, protecting them from the explosion of force bearing down from above.

In a whirl of his own crimson magic and the swirling monotone of the wind spirits, she lost his form, but heard the rising sound of his sword, drawing and striking across something, shouting and ringing true, soaring above the traumatic, soundless roar of the creature before her. The walls and ceiling trembled under the force of the reverberation, and loose wooden beams shook, threatening to fall on the tiny young woman below.

Kagome had no time to comprehend movement, was having a hard time remembering how to breathe, recalling her name. Instead of seeking shelter, a safer place to be, she huddled under the shield and watched through disbelieving eyes as the creature, the combined power of their enemy's magic swirled in a red and grey mist, each lazy tendril entwining and separating, as if they were magnetized and opposing forces.

And then, at the edges of her conscious, she felt the approach of a familiar presence, the tickle at the back of her mind that alerted her to the existence of the sword… and the man who carried it.

In the next moment, a second after she realized Sesshoumaru, or someone who had found a way to wield his blade, was approaching, the world seemed to shift sideways and promptly explode.

Before her, the magic of the wind spirits fought a battle with the Blacksmith, lost inside a dark impermeable mass of sorcery, against a far wall, slumped and at a loss, Inuyasha sat, struggling with his lax limbs, his eyes vague and hazy, and further down, holding his own against their enemies, the Mage raised his hands, thrust them forward as if to physically push his magic out and disappeared into a swirling blue mist, light ricocheting off within the misty clouds, their elemental enemies swarmed with the azure haze.

Kagome shook herself, rattled all the willful thoughts and fears back to where they belonged, raised the shield, found the strength to rise and stumble out of the immediate path of magic, fell against a wall, watched as gold flared within crimson and grew, saw the swirl of magic as a flickering opaque head of an inscrutable beast tossed upwards and howled to the broken sky.

All fell silent in a sudden hush, and then, like it was nothing but an intricate play, nothing but rehearsed steps, crimson, indigo, and gold lit the hall from ceiling to floor, combined into a wash of white and a deafening silence.

When her eyes cleared she looked up into the face of the most handsome man she had ever met, and breathing, which had been difficult to begin with, became nearly impossible.

He said nothing to her, reached down and hoisted her up, sheathed her sword into the scabbard at her side, pulled her along, swept her away from the chaos and through the haze that had settled over the impromptu battlefield and into a darkened corridor.

She could not find words to say that she was glad he was alive and well and as surly as ever, so she settled for a much less hopeful, happy topic, "Did you kill them?"

"Some," was his simple answer.

It seemed he was not inclined to rejoice over her living state either.

Figures, her mind muttered knowingly.

As he dragged her she turned and looked over her shoulder, saw the vague form of Inuyasha and the Mage slip through the heavy magic and disappear, and then the  
Blacksmith appeared, covering his mouth with his forearm, wincing against the sorcery.

"We don't have much time," he said to Sesshoumaru, hurrying alongside the man and the girl, grimacing as he noticed a long gash along his forearm. "The Mage and your brother have taken a different route. The beast can only follow one set of us, but follow it will. Is she alright?"

Sesshoumaru reached down and plucked the shield from Kagome's white knuckled grasp, tossing it back to the man who had saved her life.

"She is fine."

Kagome thought it awfully presumptuous of her Protector to assume her health, but let it slide, because she was much more interested in getting out of the monastery alive than arguing with a seasoned, blood thirsty warlord.

"You didn't kill all of them did you?" She asked morosely as Sesshoumaru lifted her over a fallen pillar, depositing her into the hands of the Blacksmith as he, too descended from the felled post.

"Nearly all, but strongest of their clan still live," the Blacksmith answered, glancing over his shoulder to assure himself of their momentary safety. "They performed a powerful, ancient magic to create that creature. It is imbued with most of the clan's powers. As they died it did little if anything to staunch their magic. They had already given it up."

"The Mage was expecting something of this nature," Sesshoumaru growled, pulling Kagome down a narrow hall, ducking under fallen beams.

Comprehension dawned on her sluggish mind. "And that's why he needs to be on the roof. That's the one place he can channel magic great enough to rid us of them. Isn't it a natural amplifier or something? And that's why he took me up there to perform his magic?"

The darker man paused and motioned for his two companions to turn a corner, and there, up ahead, was a lone staircase, and thankfully, no enemies in sight. He took a moment to let the shadows fall from his face and smiled down at Kagome. "Something like that, yes."

"Go," Sesshoumaru intoned as they approached the steps, "we do not have time for idle conversation."

Their ascent was quick and easy, especially given that Sesshoumaru was practically carrying her, but their enemies were not far behind. Already the outside wind was beginning to howl, and the unnamed beast was lumbering, shaking the walls and the upper foundations loose from their holds. Hallways slipped in and out of each other, they twisted through them, skimmed along the walls, slipped through the shadows, crawled through debris, climbed through broken shoji screens, passed by angry monks, skirted fearful holy men.

They met little opposition on the way, though a few monks raised their guard, attempted, or thought about using their magic against them. All it took to discourage them was a single look from Sesshoumaru, radiating power, authority, and a murderous intent that pervaded the very air they passed through.

And finally, by some greater grace, they reached the final corridor, the last to lead them to the top of the monastery. Somewhere off in the distance wood and glass shifted and the three companions turned, both men instantly drawing their weapons, their power stretching and reaching to the surface, but the two shadows that appeared where not those of their enemies but those of Inuyasha and the Mage, hobbling, trailing a misty conglomeration of sorcery behind them.

Instinctively, Kagome turned her eyes to the heavy double doors, the last barrier before their final destination, relief and anxiety flooding her stomach in a twisted paradox of feeling.

Gingerly, her Protector released his hold on her arm and turned to face his approaching companions.

"Good," the Mage sighed in relief, clasping a hand to the Blacksmith's shoulder, "you made it." He glanced down at Kagome and back at the other two men, thinking. "I need to use my magic outside in the element, inside the room. It is the only way to… It is the only way," he finished, his voice firm and hard.

The four men and the young woman slipped down the final hallway and through the doorway and were instantly greeted with the sharp bite of the wind. Kagome had hardly realized they were moving before she was swept up in a one armed embrace and vaulted across the suspended bridge and into the middle of the strange room she had visited so many times.

Around her, the pillars appeared to glow in welcoming, promising them safety.

"I need to speak to you," the Mage announced behind them, addressed Sesshoumaru, eyes glinting strangely.

"We do not-"

"I would greatly appreciate it if you would humor me."

Sesshoumaru nodded once, curtly and waved the other three away from him, inclining his head ever so slightly to speak to the sorcerer at his side.

Kagome was gently brushed aside by the Blacksmith, ushered out of hearing distance.

Inuyasha smiled briefly at her, though to her eyes it appeared more of a grimace of pain, and then moved away to lean against a red pillar, closing his eyes and reigning in his ragged breath.

Kagome blinked after him and looked up at the Blacksmith, regarding her with a deep, measured look.

"I am sorry if I hurt you when-"

She shook her head, the motion sending her vision skating along a dizzying journey.

"I'm fine. Don't apologize for saving me; I am more than grateful, just not aptly able to express my gratitude to you at this moment." She smiled tiredly, trying to ignore the whine of the wind; the creeping note that pitched high and raked shivers down her spine.

She could feel the approach of the remaining enemies, knew they were but scant seconds away- but could not allow herself the energy to care.

Both the Blacksmith and the girl turned to the sounds, the blooming power, watched, almost dejectedly, as the doors they had fled through were blown off their hinges, shattered wood and walls flying away in the gale that approached, the monster that had chased them.

It stood in the decimated hallway, the wind demoness at its feet, the last few members of the wind clan dotting the debris, haggard, worn, waxing, their power channeled into the beast, rising tall and vague before them, its eyes boring through the distance, hellfire lighting within black pitch.

Kagome reached a trembling hand out and brushed her fingertips along the pillar she stood next to, anchoring herself, fighting to hold the gaze of destruction and not imagine the world burning under its hateful stare.

* * *

"I cannot go with you." 

Sesshoumaru was quiet for a moment, his golden eyes flashing with anger and distrust.

"I have come a long way for Fate, Mage. Now is not the time to play your tricks."

The Man sighed and his shoulders fell. "No tricks. I was never meant to leave this place. Fate may have brought you here, but it deems that I should stay." Dark, troubled eyes focused in the doorway, straining against the evil element of the wind. "I have one last duty to perform here. Just one."

Slowly, painstakingly so, the heavy emotion behind the words sank into Sesshoumaru's head, through his skin and into his bones, like brittle glass they shattered, and he felt himself struggle, strain against the futility of it all, the curse of Fate. Perhaps if he had more time he would have argued, would have made demands, would have insisted one thing or the other, but he could not because there was no time, and he was wasting seconds he did not own.

"You are sure?"

The sorcerer nodded once, his head bowing in humble acknowledgement. "I am." When he looked up and met Sesshoumaru's gaze he smiled, an impish twinkle returning to his eye.

"I have a few things to take care of past those gates I once held open for our enemies. A few weapons to reclaim, a woman to torment. I am not missing much by leaving this place. It has grown quite boring." He gestured flippantly at the monastery, in shambles, broken and weary. "They are a bunch of traitorous bastards anyway. Never could get over the Maitreya Buddha rumor. They were probably informing our enemies this whole time…"

Sesshoumaru gave a slight shrug of the shoulders, "It is very likely."

The Mage laughed lightly, the peel of laughter ringing true and clear, brightening the magic that clung to his form, glowing in the crimson pillars surrounding them.

"Ah, my friend, Lord of the Western Lands, Son of Taisho, I suppose you will kill me if I become too sentimental?"

"Yes," he answered shortly.

"Then perhaps goodbyes are best left for the real endings, no?"

Sesshoumaru turned his eyes away from his last standing companion, golden depths focusing on the straining magic just behind the doors, hardly contained within the monastery.

"This is not an ending. The promise of death is nothing but a declaration waiting to be broken. It is all in one's perception of the ordeal. Death is nothing but another chance to prove that mortality is optional."

"Spoken like a true warlord." The man paused and sighed, his gaze drifting down to his wrists where he was carefully removing his golden bracelets, drawing out his power as he did, holding them one last time in his wrinkled hand. He reached out and deposited them into Sesshoumaru's hand. "Give these to the Protector. She will know what to do with them. Take care of her," he ordered, serious, firm, "she is very clumsy."

"This I know," Sesshoumaru murmured, his hand closing over the rings, fisting violently, a vague anger burgeoning in his chest.

As the Mage stripped off the pack worn over his shoulder and pressed it into Sesshoumaru's hand, the warlord watched, silent, as the doors to the bridge cracked and broke, the walls splintered and shredded, the last of their enemies appearing in the aftermath.

"It is time for you to go Sesshoumaru-sama."

The warrior nodded, and because he could do nothing more, reached out and grasped the holy man's forearm with his large hand, the man returning the gesture, a brotherly deed, centuries of history building up between them, only to shatter a moment later when Sesshoumaru extricated his hand, turned his back on the Miroku, and walked away.

* * *

Kagome frowned as Sesshoumaru stalked toward them, his steps methodical, his face darker than she had ever seen it, shaded and hooded grey, his eyes catching the light in a strange way, flickering a distant color. He walked up to her and extended his hand. Confused, Kagome opened hers, only to feel the cool touch of metal, the pleasant sound of jingling. 

She looked down and gasped in revelation.

"Wait-"

Sesshoumaru pinned her with a single look, silencing her, striking her more surely than a hand ever could.

"Put them on," he ordered before walking past her, shoving the pack into Inuyasha's arms, his destination the edge of the enormous room, the one edge where the mountain hung near, a tiny rocky extension, covered in snow.

Kagome looked past the Blacksmith's shoulder and toward the Mage, already sinking down to the floor, his mouth moving in a quick utterance, his hands upturned, his sorcery darkening upon his fingers and on the floor below him.

A sharp pain twisted in her chest, tweaked high in her nose, the sting of tears against her eyes.

"No," she whispered, looking up to the quiet, humble man before her, "we can't leave him. We-"

The Blacksmith smiled down at her and gently touched her shoulder. "You have to go now. I'll wait with him."

"But-"

There was a gently tug at her elbow and Inuyasha was at her side, pulling her away, the tall man before her pushing her toward Sesshoumaru.

"We have to go. The Mage can't hold out against them for long. We have to make it down the mountain… We have to go."

Inuyasha's voice faded into the background of her mind, and she was unwillingly pulled along and back, her feet slipping as she attempted to catch one last look at the man who she had envisioned, the man she hardly knew, but had grown to know, somehow, though strange, fated ways.

"We have to go," Inuyasha insisted to her, hands pulling, plucking, threatening to pick her up and forcibly move her.

She was swept up and pulled to the edge, saw out of the corner of watery eyes as Inuyasha scrambled up the snowy embankment above his head, reached down for her, struggled with futile resistance as the Blacksmith handed her upwards.

She shivered against the cold and against the fate that had brought her to the horrible, empty moment she was living in. Inuyasha pulled her up and up, and in a frenzied, desperate swipe she snagged the Blacksmith's hand, grabbed it in her own, hung on for one more moment.

"Thank him for me," she choked out; grasping his fingers so hard she was afraid she might have hurt him.

"I will."

He smiled at her and something inside snapped and shattered.

"I never told you my name," she whispered desperately, staring down into familiar brown eyes, the gentle smile. "I'm Kagome."

His lips parted and his eyes lit with warmth.

"Kagome. I am Sota."

And then he let her hand slip from his and she was hauled up and away, over the snow bank, her vision disappearing into white.

* * *

He was hidden against the pure snow, was like the color itself, was so pale he looked ethereal, perched on the top of a slope, overlooking the top roof, staring at the tiles upon which he had sat and listened to secrets, had given into the desire to speak and murmur thoughts and musings that he would never have anywhere else, with anyone else. 

The wind had died down, was anchored to the monastery.

He almost laughed at his own cynical doubt.

Perhaps the Mage really was that strong, could actually hold great power down with his bare hands, with his indigo soul.

Perhaps.

He watched as if he was nothing more than a bystander, was not waiting to see if the greatest mage he had ever known could do that which no one else could, waited to see if he would destroy a beast created from powers greater than all the men in the monastery combined.

Waited and felt the air change, felt it light and electrify, felt it slide into a tense build, felt it pull, constricting, binding across his skin. Watched as azure light expanded and contracted and watched through the pillars, imbued itself with ancient magic and swept up like wings, touched over the snow packed drift he stood upon, passed him with a lazy wave and a haunting memory of an indolent smile, felt the winking and extinguishing of the great, dark, terrible power of his enemies, and watched as suddenly, the light faded, and the world appeared a little dimmer than before.

He was alone on the slope, was alone and tired, was worn and wearing thin.

He was alone at long last, had watched a dying edge end before his very eyes.

Had watched as a companion willingly sacrificed himself to great sorcery so they could make it down the mountain, so they would live, so Kagome would survive, so he, Sesshoumaru, could carry on in his quest, could find the jewel and master the sword and save the world.

Yes, he understood why, but at that moment, solitary and pale on the side of a mountain face, it all seemed trivial and contrived and hardly worth the effort.

A vague flicker of magic, of power, familiar but alien, and he knew that one generation had lived, would go one to light more forges and fires, would carry on the memory of a man who had lived for centuries to end himself on a mountaintop.

Sesshoumaru knew there was more to it than that, but could not find the patience to question Fate, to wonder why the man he needed, the sorcerer, the man he had been sent to find would have to die to carry on with destiny's idiotic plan.

Why? He asked himself.

And only the wind answered him, pure, cold, and achingly bittersweet.


	31. Riddles

_Thank you to the reviewers. This story will keep going because of you! (Apologies for lateness, was suffering Post Potter Depression)  
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**Chapter 31**

**Riddles**

Aeron Michaels was average at just about everything.

But he'd been told otherwise.

His father had told him, his mother had told him, his entire extended family had reminded him of it, his friends had told him, his prep school had pushed him into classes because he was advanced, another way of saying, 'You, Aeron, are anything but average and ordinary'. His Ivy league University had told him that he was exceptional, that he was bright, not brilliant, but certainly bright, good with numbers, a decent fellow, mildly interesting, but not average. Because average people did not come from wealthy families, did not excel at school, did not hold great promise to also become wealthy, to raise a family of exceptional little girls and boys who would, undoubtedly, start the cycle all over again.

But Aeron Michaels knew, after a lifetime of hearing just how wonderful he was, when it was real and when it was not. And he knew, knew better than anyone, that he was anything but extraordinary.

He was quite boring in fact. Was smart, yes, but he was not the only one in the world to be, was good with numbers, well, yes, this was true, too. But, beyond that, beyond his father's name and his large bank account, Aeron was nothing much at all.

Most of the 'extraordinary' things he had done were also quite boring.

He didn't really remember much of prep school, it was full of tucked in shirts, ties, and rules about chewing gum. He didn't remember receiving his acceptance letter to _University of Very Important Prestigious People_, but he remembered his father's reaction to the thin, crisp letter, the black words, typed, his name inserted at the top, a few quick words that told him his future was set.

Oh, yes, he remembered his father's face, his reaction, very well.

He'd held the letter up like it was made of pure gold, as if everything and anything Aeron had done up to that point had been insignificant. As if, this, _this_, was the moment Mr. Michaels had been waiting for, had waited eighteen years for, that stupid, ridiculous little piece of paper.

He'd clapped Aeron on the back, opened the liquor cabinet and served up his best and oldest bottle of wine. And when the glasses where emptied, after his mother had stopped smiling her brittle, careful smile, after his father had placed the acceptance letter in a frame, after they had descended into customary silence, Aeron had trudged up to his room and into the shadowy space, head down, shoulders slumped.

He remembered walking to the foot of his bed, and falling backwards, wishing there was an ocean below him, an expanse sea to swallow him whole.

It seemed to take and eternity to hit the bed, and as he fell he saw his life panned out before him, boring, a replica of his father's, perfect, or seemingly so.

And he hated it very much.

By the time he hit the bed, he was despairing, was watching as his dreams were crushed by a piece of paper with a well known name across the top, watching as an expensive university beat down his hopes and goals until there was nothing left but a single, solitary path.

He remembered that very well.

He also recalled the very few times he had tried to speak up, had started telling his absent and emotionally unresponsive parents that he had no desire to go to _The University of Very Important Prestigious People _and would rather go to a smaller college where he could pursue his one great avenue of interest, history.

Or, rather, the history of people.

Anthropology.

And more specifically, Archaeology.

That was what he truly wanted to do, what he wished he could do everyday for the rest of his life.

But whenever he mentioned it, he was brushed aside, or, sometimes, even yelled at by a very angry middle-aged man, that he was not to waste his time thinking about history and digging in the dirt.

And before he knew it he was standing on the manicured lawn of his expensive university, a whole world of expectations weighed on his shoulders. His father had left him at school with one warning, one parting message.

If he decided to pursue archaeology all funds would be cut.

Aeron was a practical man, even in his younger days. And at times, he was even conniving. Inspiration struck him one lonely and studious filled night and it was this idea, the thought that smacked him in the head so clearly he wondered if it had been divine intervention, that led him to be, ultimately, the crankiest, most sarcastic accountant to ever grace the planet.

He, in his terribly misguided youth, with his high hopes, and silly, wasteful dreams, had decided 'To hell with parents!' but! But! Not to hell with their money. Their cash, he had reasoned, could still be used to further his education even as he slowly, carefully, painstakingly moved toward his one true calling.

Inspiration, it turned out, was often not as exciting as one would think it to be. Because the epiphany that struck Aeron between his eyes and consequently ended his studying for the night (which, unfortunately, affected his grade on the test he had the next day), pointed to one thing, one true shinning beacon that would get him what he wanted.

And that glorious idea that shouted across his mind was a blaze, a fiery conflagration of a single word.

Accountant.

After the initial excitement had worn off and his head was reasonably calm he was left with the distinct feelings of desolation.

Accountant.

_Really_? He had asked the cosmos, inner voice disbelieving.

Really, it seemed to reply.

Aeron had sat back in his chair, his cramped dorm desk space, had run his hand over his chin and thought for a very long, silent moment.

Accountants earned decent paychecks, depending upon where they worked. Money meant he could continue school, continuing school meant an eventual degree, and an eventual degree meant digging exciting things up from the ground… or something like that.

It would be a slow process, but! But! Theoretically he could work anywhere that handled money, which meant he could work at a museum while attending school for a degree…a different degree, one that would make him a professional of dirt digging. It wouldn't be quite what he had hoped to do but it could serve as motivation.

After the full force of his insight had faded he had quietly changed his major from something inane (probably business management, but in all honesty he couldn't remember) to something quite dull, Accounting and mathematical whatnots. And then, with his new path in life set, his goal a little closer, he had announced, carefully, his major change and new desire to balance accounts to his father.

This had an older, balding Mr. Michaels quite vexed for a time, but he soon gave up his grudging dislike for the situation, because while it may not have been exactly what he wanted his son doing, it was much, much better than watching his pride and occasional joy lolling around in dusty sand dunes with brushes and buckets.

Around the time elder Mr. Michaels said this to younger Aeron, it occurred to the soon to be accountant that his father, his mother, and perhaps even he, was a terrible snob. Not the most devastating of self-contemplative news, but disconcerting nonetheless.

And around about the time he was getting ready to graduate with an undergrad degree in mathematical something-or-others, he found that he didn't quite like the lanky, dark haired, glasses wearing man who looked back at him in mirrors and other reflective surfaces.

It had hit him one night, as he leaned over his sink in his tiny apartment, perhaps he was shaving, or perhaps he was staring at his malfunctioning and blurry eyes, when he wondered what sort of a man would give up his dreams to please a father who hated his own life so thoroughly that he lived through his son.

Aeron realized, as he blinked his dark eyes and watched the shadows fall away from his face, that he, _he_ was that sort of man.

And he was very disappointed to hear that from himself.

He had spent much of his life living up to expectations and ideals that he had not set, ideals and expectations that were from no one who knew him even remotely well, and on the edge of something great, so close to taking his life into his own hands, Aeron found that he was afraid.

And being afraid was more terrifying than facing his father, was more frightening than taking a step into the thing he most wanted and hoped for. Because what he was afraid of was the very last thing he had ever expected.

Aeron Michaels, unhappy Aeron Michaels, was afraid of becoming anything different than what he had been his entire life.

The fear of the fear become a vicious cycle, one that pulled him under and dragged him down and made him into a worse replica of his father. Where his angry, tired, worn parent hated most of his life, he at least had the courage to admit it and forged through it anyway.

But Aeron was stuck.

He was afraid to move forward and he loathed the thought of going back. He didn't like the man he was, but he didn't want to be the weak willed son of a rich man, working for daddy, didn't want to do what he was told because he was _tired_ of it.

Graduation came and went, he moved out of one tiny apartment and into another one. One all the way across the country. He went from one seaboard to the other and when he stepped inside the white, vacant space of his new home he hated himself even more, because before him he saw the meaningless existence of a man who was too miserable and beaten to take a step forward and make everything better, to make everything good and happy and alright.

He had enough courage to find a job at a place he wanted to work at, a place that, unfortunately, called out with bitter echoes and fallen dreams. He found work at a tiny museum and soon became the junior accountant. After a year, after the older, senior member passed him the torch, he watched as the private establishment expanded and added more hallways and catered to richer and richer people. He watched as precious crates were moved back into the temperature controlled storage area in the back of the museum, watched as paintings lined the wall, watched, for six years he watched and stood in the shadows and was unable to do anything for the fear of changing, of failing, of becoming someone different.

He was a coward and he hated himself all the more.

When his father died, somewhere between his first day and six years to the present, he flew home. He sat through a layover and hunched his shoulders, stared at his black briefcase and shiny shoes and wondered where his life had gone off to, wondered if his dreams would ever come back, wondered if the little black haired boy who liked to read history and accounts of famous archaeological finds would ever stumble back toward the lanky, lonely man sitting alone in an airport.

When he went home for the last time to bury his mother, he stared down at his father's gravestone and wondered how he could have lived his entire life and not have known the man who reared him. He thought, almost bemused, that it was a terrible waste of ones life, to spend so much time worrying about approval.

But even when he ran his hand over the cold, wet tombstone, engraved with his senior Mr. Michaels' name, he could not find the nerve to let go of his father's cold and distant voice, his own inadequacies, to pluck up the courage to enroll in a class.

Back home in his empty apartment he would sit and watch television, would lay on his bed and read, and sometimes, when he was feeling the worst, he would lay his hands behind his head and stare at the white ceiling and think that really, it was such a simple thing, getting what he wanted. Enroll in a class, take a few years of school, get some experience in the field, travel the world.

But something always held him back.

Sometimes it was silly little excuses; sometimes he could face his fear and knew exactly why he wouldn't just _do_ something about it.

So he existed in his ties and his dress shirts, his shiny shoes and his briefcases, lived inside numbers and rainy days, organized files and memorized where the keys on his calculator where, listened to the old bastard who ran the museum and ate lunch alone, and dinner, and breakfast, and was very, very tired most of the time.

Six years was a very long time to stay in one state of listlessness. But there in his cocoon of solitude, something changed.

It must have been three years he had been at Worthington, because when _she_ arrived one ordinary summer day, they already had marble floors and he remembered that his door was open and he heard the tap of shoes, loud, louder and sharper than any other in the museum, and he had leaned back in his chair, and watched as a young intern moved through the halls for an entire summer.

He remembered the moment she turned the corner and looked into his open office door.

It was strange, very out of the ordinary and humdrum of his life, very much not a part of his day-to-day monotony. She appeared in a hurry, was probably running to get coffee as she passed by, and their eyes met.

And Aeron felt as if he had been colorblind all his life only to suddenly stare into a wash of color so vibrant it nearly took his breath away. Suddenly everything wasn't grey, wasn't just another day of nothingness.

Perhaps he would have simply considered it a physical attraction to a young (far too young for him) woman but he knew, somehow, that his interest in her stretched beyond the casual cursory and approving look.

She was pretty, yes, not a bad thing to be, but that was not what interested him about her. It was, as far as he could tell, something intangible, something under the surface, something he could not describe. But whatever it was, he was drawn to it.

He struggled, effortlessly, against the yearn and the tug, told himself over and over again that she was too young and not meant for him. Which was fine with whatever inside of him wanted to know her. He really had no interest in her in that way, didn't want a relationship with her, knew, on all levels that it was inappropriate and something he _did not want_. And, the little pull inside, the stab in his gut quite agreed, but wanted to be near her, wanted to figure out what was behind those green eyes, why, why, why, she made everything seem possible when he hardly knew her, when he didn't even know her name.

It didn't seem to matter though, because at times it was almost as if a giant force were guiding him, was pushing him toward her, nudging him, pulling him.

He rebelled of course, because it was simply unnatural for part of him to want something so bad even as another half of him was bent on _not_ overstepping his bounds.

He was still hung up on the idea of sexual attraction, was fighting against the unseen force with every ounce he had in him.

It took about a year to realize that it wasn't some twisted, depraved lust filled want that prodded at him every time he saw her. It was something quite different.

If Aeron had not been a practical man, believed in what could be and not what was, he would have said _someone somewhere_ was trying to tell him _something_.

She was hired the winter after her first summer as an intern. But it wasn't until the next summer that he finally asked her name.

She had dropped a stack of files while trying to open the accounting office door, had scattered them everywhere, was wobbling on her heels as she crouched to pick them up when he decided there was no harm in asking her what her name was.

Kagome, she'd said, Kagome Higurashi.

He'd probably said something accidentally rude at that point because he remembered her face as she left and she was not happy.

Unfortunately for Aeron his cowardice was not his only flaw. He was also a horrible people person and resorted to the only thing he knew to survive in social situations: sarcasm.

It took half the summer before he worked up the nerve and the self-preservation to be polite to her.

From that point on they exchanged a few words a week, mostly nettled quips from she and disdained insults from he. Occasionally he was given the impression that they were teasing one another because they knew, almost too well, what the other's weak spots were.

So while he didn't know her, hardly knew anything about her, he was at least able to call her by her first name when speaking without intended insult, and her full name when he meant to bother her.

She must have worked at the museum two or so years by then. Two years of monotonous errand running and coffee spills.

She seemed unhappy most of the time. Occasionally he would make her smile when he caught her in the right mood, but mostly he would hit just below the funny line, would throw her off and end up fumbling rudely. Which, was never what he intended, he just had no idea how a twenty-eight year old man was supposed to befriend a twenty year old woman.

And the strange desire to be around her and know her had never faded, only made things worse. Made him draw closer and then say something that was meant to prove he was not an ass, was not a snob, was not like the rest of the people she worked with, only to have it backfire in his face and dump him near where he began.

He wondered why she didn't just stop talking to him.

But she didn't, well, except for one week where she had misconstrued a tactless attempt at a compliment to mean he wanted to sleep with her. Or something of that nature. He didn't remember, probably because he was too worried she was going to slap him senseless.

But he could say with honesty that any attraction he felt for her had not been a product of his strange, unrelenting need to be around her. No, there were no feelings of that nature surrounding the pull.

The part of him that noticed her smile and her strange, unconventional ways of doing things was all Aeron, the other part of him seemed too… pure, too innocent and concerned to care for such a silly thing as attraction. He was in two minds about her most of the time, and one it seemed, did not always feel as if it belonged to his conscious, sarcastic inner Aeron.

And one day he decided he had wasted enough time, had to find out why he was so compelled to be around her and he sat next to her at a coffee shop window and talked to her the way he had meant to, the way he had tried for three years.

Or course, just when he felt like he was getting the hang of befriending a tired spitfire, a very rich and very mysterious man had swooped in and rattled her brain and had successfully ushered her off and out of Aeron's life.

Which, really, should have been fine. In some ways it was almost a relief.

But she hadn't been gone more than an hour, had only just quit her job when the irrational and ridiculous fears started to tear at his head, morphed him from cool, impersonal Aeron Michaels into a man he had never met, a man who could not stop thinking about a woman he hardly knew, could not help but worry, worry, and worry for her.

It was ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. He was damn near seeking professional help for illogical attachment disorder, if that was even a condition, but then, then! Quite suddenly, unexpectedly, then, he started _seeing_ things.

And after that he couldn't quite bring himself to seek help because he knew he really _would_ be committed if he started talking about strange visions involving men with purple clothes.

He was very nearly convinced that he was crazy, was almost positive, in fact. He was unraveling, inch by inch, was watching as his safe little life fell away in lieu of anxiety that was not his to feel and insanity that might have been his, but was hoping it wasn't.

And all this, all of it, the past, his stupid, lonely problems, his odd tendencies toward a dark haired museum assistant, his accursed father, his cowardice, were swirling through his head as he slumped in his chair, tapping a yellow pencil against the same desk he had for six years.

He ran a tired hand over his brow.

He had hardly slept the night before and was feeling it there, in the middle of the afternoon, almost asleep at his desk. He pulled his large hand away from his clammy forehead and glanced out into the grey day.

It _never_ seemed to stop raining.

He sighed as his mind drifted back to his dreams, fragments flying around in his mind, broken and cracked, nothing but empty pieces to a puzzle that didn't exist, a world that consisted of everything within his tired head.

There had been an urgency to his sleeping thoughts, a despondency, a sorrow. They had been like that for at least four days. When he woke he could not readily remember what occurred while he slept, but he knew it was not normal, knew that it agitated and disturbed him, knew that something was very, very wrong and he was powerless to fix it, to cure himself.

He groaned out loud and hunched over his table, feeling useless and small, stupid, insignificant. He had to get out, needed fresh air, had to think, anything to stop his thoughts from churning. With sudden and real fervor, he stood and strode out of his office, shoving his hands in his pockets, unconsciously slouched, kept his face down, headed for the main doors, needed something, coffee maybe, a cookie perhaps, to distract him.

When he rounded the corner, his shoes tapping merrily beneath him, the first thought on his mind was the corner bistro, and his second, wondering, curious thought was centered on a strange tinkering noise, loftily floating down the hall, echoing around in his ears.

Why, he wondered, would a dog be inside the museum?

It didn't seem to faze him much as dogs had little to do with numbers, and slowly sinking into insanity, so he ignored it and chose to brood silently, right until something soft and heavy darted past his vision and planted itself firmly before his path.

Aeron halted and stared down at the creature before him.

It was short and wiggly, exactly like a puppy but was not at all small, was in fact, quite large for such a short dog.

He frowned.

"I'm a cat person."

The dog cocked its head and looked over its shoulder.

And it was right about then that the inner pull, the insistence, the confounding need to follow, jerked his head upright and toward the entrance doors of the museum.

And he wondered blearily, bewilderedly, why, why, Kagome was standing at the doors, shaking out her umbrella, appearing for all intents and purposes perfectly fine, not lost, not kidnapped, and not very much different from when she had left.

And behind her, standing as if he were royalty, as if he were made of gold and had servants kissing his immaculate toes, was none other than the famed and elusive billionaire, Taisho.

The floor faded out from underneath a very confused accountant and through the noisy haze of his mind he found breath enough for a single word.

"Shit."

* * *

It wasn't as cold as she expected it to be, standing there, on the side of the mountain. Still, she could not help but shiver, could not help but wrap her arms around herself, could not help the faint tremor that ran through her, nor the weakness in her knees threatening to give way to gravity.

"Are you alright?"

The soft voice next to her drifted down through the sweet whistle of the wind, devoid of the dark fury it had carried for their enemies.

She nodded numbly.

"I'm fine," her voice cracked, was raw and tired.

A gentle hand descended awkwardly, squeezed her shoulder gently.

"There must have been a reason," he murmured above her as if he were trying to convince himself, "there must have."

When Kagome looked up she caught the dark, troubled expression of his eyes, the contours of his profile, facing the direction his older, more capable brother had wandered. She could barely make him out against the snow. Had it not been for the streaks of black and red on his own colorless clothing she might have lost him in the scene.

He was staring down over the broken monastery and even at the distance she stood she could see the intensity on his face. He was waiting, was letting his power fan out behind him, studying the scene for enemies, hovering, taking great painstaking care to cover their tracks, to keep them hidden.

But that wasn't the real reason he remained, a solid, stationary object, distant and inscrutable, his eyes scanning the magical place they had climbed up and over.

He was gathering himself, taking a moment to say goodbye to a past that had caught up with him suddenly and without warning, bidding farewell to a part of him that he had thought died long ago.

It wasn't fair, she thought, almost desperately, Why had fate led them so far only to end their one hope? Why had he chosen to die? Surely, surely there had been another way, another way besides the one that left three companions alone on a darkened mountain.

She inhaled a shaky breath, tipped her head back and welcomed the sunshine. It had been so long since she had seen its rays, so long that it felt out of place, it felt too bright for the horrible agony twisting her up inside.

He was _gone_.

He was gone and they were left and it was cruel and wrong and she knew, better now than she had before she found her way into the magical monastery, that she had to let it go, that if it really was fate they would find another way, would let him rest in peace, would remember him and thank him everyday, would not forget his smile and his mystery and his power, but they would let it go, would cast it aside, would refuse to let it weight them down, because what else did they have?

What else did she have?

She glanced back up at Inuyasha, brave and shaken, distressed, fearful even, and she thought, warmly, consolingly, she had two brothers and that seemed enough.

Expelling a sigh she looked down at her wrists where the golden sunlight lit off the Mage's bracelets, content and quiet. They were deceiving though; if she concentrated she could feel the spike and whirl of power, the mischievous swirl of magic.

With great, loving care she passed the calloused pad of a finger across their smooth surfaces, relishing in the brush of power. It was comforting, it reminded her of the great man she had met and lost, had become fond of so quickly, had enjoyed the company of, and she let the jewelry drop back to her wrists and stepped forward.

Inuyasha did not try to stop her, he was too wrapped up in his own shadows, dwelling on losses and mistakes, facing the western corridor, ignoring the rising and dissipating tides of power just over the snow bank.

Her legs were tired, felt like dead weight, like led. By pure desire she made it up the gentle slope of the snow and the ice and came to an unsteady stop behind the tall man, gazing down over the quiet place below. She reached for him because there was nothing else she could do and because he had been the one to tell her, to say,

"You have to let it go."

He stirred gently, as if brought up through the dredges of a great and all encompassing dream,

"Sesshoumaru."

He turned, caught her within one bright eye.

"You have to let it go."

He watched her like a predator would, sized her up, and for a very short and fleeting moment she thought he might snap, might give up all the tentative promises and sense of duty and reach out and kill her, end her life for being so presumptuous, but then he was turning away from the scene below, was passing her by, was halting at her side, leaving her to stare at the deep pockets of snowy footprints he had left, shadowy and grey, icy and crystallizing against the unrelenting winds of the mountain.

She could not see his face with his shoulder brushing hers, did not want to.

There was a gentle rustle of fabric and he had snagged her wrist, insistent and domineering, as always, always the same, and was pulling her back toward Inuyasha, was lost for words, could not speak to her.

But that was all right.

Some days she had to be the one to slip beneath the surface of an ocean of remorse, she had to be the capable one. Sometimes she had to raise him back up, carefully, gently so he didn't notice, and let him breathe.

So, really, it was all right when he pulled her along with him, because there was nowhere else she really wanted or needed to be.

"Home," he said, and there they went.

* * *

Kagome lay on the floor of her room, reveling in the feeling of carpet beneath her absent hands, tracing gentle patterns in the smooth surface underneath. Never had she thought she would be so happy to see a type of flooring, but happy and relieved she was, though lying on her back, hair still wet from a hot shower, left hand threading through the coarse fur of her beloved pet, snuggled against her side, she also felt the drowning and asphyxiating feeling of remorse, of loss.

As much as she wanted to close her eyes and forget, to let go, she knew she couldn't, not really.

She would try, she would do her best to exist and live, but that did nothing to quell remorse and despair. Worse still was the knowledge that it was not her loss, not really hers to covet and dwell on.

She had not known the Mage long or well, felt wrong and traitorous to be so affected, knew she should find Sesshoumaru and remedy their situation, search for an answer to the dead end they faced, perhaps even talk to him, just speak and spill the secrets of the darkest most secretive parts of each other, if only to think of something else, if only to distract for a moment.

She closed her eyes and drew her arm over them, pressing down until she saw vibrant colors explode and dot her black sight.

She was _so_ tired. She wanted to burrow under the floor and sleep forever, wanted to forget, to get out and leave behind the life and the dimming light of excitement and adventure.

It had never been a fairytale, their quest, but it had felt like it in odd beautiful moments. And that very thought made her cringe at her own naiveté. How silly she must be to trivialize the world's unknown plight, to write it off as nothing more than an interesting experience.

It was much, much more than magic and wonder. It was darker and deeper and far older and far more complicated. It was so far past simplicity Kagome wondered why she even bothered to think about it, to wonder. Obviously she had no idea what was next in store for them, and as it always seemed, answers were always above and out of her reach.

She drew her hand away from Ajax as he sighed in his sleep, his warm body pressing against her side, a cold nose worming its way into the crook of her elbow.

Life was funny, she decided, funny and unpredictable and utterly irresistible. Because even as she threatened to have a breakdown while lying on her back in the middle of a beautiful room in the midst of a giant mansion hidden somewhere in the deeper surrounding forests of Japan, she could not find regret anywhere within her. Not regret for taking the sword, not for listening to a man she had briefly believed to be insane, not for trusting him, not for climbing a mountain and meeting Fate on its windy slopes, not even for the few tears that slipped down her cheek, homage to a man who had sacrificed himself for the greater good.

She sighed and wiped her face before sitting up carefully, attempting to dislodge herself from Ajax without waking him. He sighed again and rolled to his side, snuggling into the carpet she abandoned. When she stood her eyes flashed to the dresser at her bedside where the Mage's bracelets winked at her, beckoning her over.

A lopsided grin tugged at her lips and she slowly meandered over to the tabletop, stopping above it, reaching a tentative finger to trace the outlines of one of the circles.

It hadn't felt right to wear them. After they descended the mountain, a descent which had taken a considerably shorter amount of time than the ascent, one in which, miraculously, Kagome had not been at all affected by the cold (she thought, perhaps, the Mage's jewelry or even the Bell and Vajra had something to do with this), she had removed them, had stored them away inside her robe pockets, had touched them every now and again to reassure herself that they were still there, but could not keep them on or wear them as the sorcerer had.

Beneath her wandering fingertips, the gold circlets glinted again and her smile widened.

"I see you there, you don't have to charm me," she murmured at them, as if they were the Mage himself, as if he were manifested in them, was cheekily charming her, as if his dark eyes were winking from within the sheen of gold.

Sighing, Kagome swept the bracelets off the tabletop and into her hands. Turning on her heel she slipped out of her room and into the long, empty, quiet hall. The shadows stretching beneath her feet appeared blue, were seeped in moonlight, in the end of spring.

As she passed the large windows she slowed her gait, paused for a moment to look out over the serene gardens and drink in the site of a waxing moon showering an ancient homeland with its benevolent bath of calming light. Sometimes, when she looked close enough, she felt as If she could see the magic rising up and out of the land. And much like the times she had stood transfixed inside the monastery, she hovered, wishing she could reach out and touch the intangible.

In her hands, the bracelets gleamed, seemed to glow, to draw in the moonlight and azure shadows.

Emerald eyes fell to the objects in her hands and she scowled. Magic was beautiful and wondrous when it did not demand her attention all the time. Readjusting her grip on the cool metal between her fingers she turned from the large windows and continued on her way, smoothly navigating the twists and turns of the large estate until finally, she came to a darkened hallway, a set of large double doors propped open to let a sliver of yellow light drift out onto the floor of the hall.

She approached the door with caution, pressed gently with her fingertips, peering inside with one eye.

"Snooping?" A dark voice asked from within.

Kagome jumped, her breath snagging in her chest. She pushed the door open to expose Sesshoumaru, standing next to a window behind his desk, peering out the glass, perhaps contemplating the moonlight and the existence of magic as she had done only moments before.

"I don't snoop. That's your job."

He glanced over his shoulder at her, a disapproving brow raised incredulously. Kagome waved away the vague insult and even fainter joke as it reminded her of the time before, the very precarious hours before she had forever changed her life, when she still lived in a tiny apartment, when she did not trust the man before her.

She walked to the window and stood by his side, clutching the Mage's most precious belongings to her chest.

They rested in amiable silence, lost in their thoughts, existing between each other, aware and unbothered by the other's presence. It took many deep breaths before she gathered her voice to speak about the subject so raw and new in their shared lives. She hesitated before opening her mouth, hoping he would forgive her if she touched on something he would rather not think of at that moment, on that night when the world was bathed in blue.

"He said I would know what to do with them."

Sesshoumaru inclined his head and caught her in the corner of one intense eye. "He did."

She laughed airily, shaking her head. "That man…"

Beside her, the warlord reached out a large hand and pushed open the glass of the window, allowing the sweet smell of the night into his study.

"He is a confounding, raging idiot sometimes, yes, if that was what you were thinking."

Kagome winced and bowed her head. "Not quite, no. I was thinking that he was very much a mystery and he was such a silly fool."

"Ah," the man breathed, a small smile working at the edges of his lips, smooth and pale, perfect, twisting with shadows of the night, "that is true as well." He inhaled once and turned both eyes on her, though she did not return the gaze, stared out the window instead, watching the gentle sway of the dark leaves on trees, the folded flower petals beneath sighing bushes and long grass.

"You do not know what to do with them then."

Kagome shrugged and maneuvered the warming metal between her hands. "I have an idea, a way to _attempt_ to find out." He waited, patient, and in the intervening time she felt her energy wane and die, felt tired again, wanted nothing but an endless sleep.

When she met his inquisitive gaze she had lost all her customary and required difficulty, was honest and weary before him.

A wry smile illuminated her face and she rolled her eyes, sheepish.

"Meditation of course. I seem to have forgotten all about _those_ lessons in lieu of other ones. Mainly those with swords and bruising."

Sesshoumaru was quiet for a moment and she felt a strained, uneasy tension rising inside of him, working between them like a fraying wire, ready to snap.

There was a whole mess of tangled things between them again, things he had waited too long to tell her, things she wasn't sure she wanted to know at all. Things about who he was, what he was, things that might frighten her. For, she could think of only one real and true reason why he would keep things away from her, now, now after all they had been through and all the things they had divulged to one another, and it was this, the idea that he had hidden and manipulated to keep her trust, that scared her most.

It seemed strange that a single name could unravel what she believed to be the most secure connection of faith and understanding that she had ever experienced. It was a horrible feeling, like a gnawing, empty expanse within her, to not know, even as she did.

_Demon_.

And with that single utterance of his brother's name he had changed her entire perception of fear, of _what_ she feared.

"I-"

But he was already moving away, pulling her with him by a tether of curiosity and shared responsibility. There was more there, she knew it, more there because she had admitted it in her worst moments, in moments when she feared for his life, in moments when he looked down at her and she saw his vague smile, she resigned herself swiftly, that it was _only_ responsibility and duty that had her following him without a single word.

She trailed behind him, thinking, gnawing on her lip with blunt teeth, worrying the skin until it broke and bled. They slipped over moonlit pools until they came to a door leading outward into the garden, the place she liked to wander and think.

He fell back in step beside her and they ambled through the vegetation until they reached the pond reflecting the gentle light of the pale orb above.

Sesshoumaru stopped and Kagome turned to face him fully.

She looked up at him in the dark and sighed wistfully. He had forgone his robes when they returned to the real world, the world that had long ago forgotten the existence of magic and the unexplainable. He was dressed simply and perhaps to any other woman he would have been the picture of perfection, but she did not like to see him pretending to be ordinary.

He was not and he never would be.

He caught her looking at him but did not smirk or level her with a piercing remark. Instead he sighed evenly and looked back at the gentle lapping of the water against the tiny rocky shore of his koi pond.

"Words," he started quietly, "are often not enough to describe what something is. Especially human words. We exist in the same world as you but we are not the same. People have tried and failed to describe that which is above their knowledge for many centuries. It is not that you, as a species, are stupid. You just do not understand. You are not meant to. If you did you would be like us. You would be aware of your existence as we are, you would understand that words are a futile way to describe… to describe everything.

"You have heard the words before, spirit, god, kami, being, deity, ghosts, mythical creatures, demons… They called us youkai in Japan, they called us spirits in America, they called us demons, they worshipped us, they feared us, we were above you because you did not understand us. But it does not matter. There are no words, no concept that fully describes who we are.

"My father was a great general, was descended from the greatest of his kind. We were a pureblood line, undiluted; we were one of the most powerful. Duty and honor were as much a part of us as claws and teeth, we thrived in Japan, were sons and daughters of this land."

He paused and looked up at the moon, blissful and benevolent above the gentle sway of the trees.

"Words, though inaccurate, hold sway. You know the connotations of good and evil, you think of them as black and white. When you hear of good you think of purity. When something is bad, evil, it is depraved, wrong. Names, are nothing but words, but even as they are inaccurate, they serve a valuable purpose.

"Inu no Taishou, great ruler of the Western Lands, general of an army, father of Sesshoumaru, the heir, the great killer, the warlord, the perfect assassin, his second son, Inuyasha, dog demon, half what his older brother and father were.

"Names to inspire fear and respect. Tell me," he ordered, turning his eyes on her, catching her off guard, "would you fear the rumors of a man who was believed to be a god, who was perfection embodied in the form of humanity? If you lived in a fragile time where rumor and magic were one and the same, where warriors and shogun owned the lands and the people, where death was expected and life was scarce? You would because you would not know any better or any different.

"Inuyasha was named because he needed to be feared. He was not born as strong as I. He was and is weaker; he is a way to unearth a line of strong warriors and capable warlords. If he was supposed as a demon it was for his benefit. So you see, words may be inaccurate but they serve are clear and defined purpose."

Kagome's fingers twitched against the metal in her hands and she studied the pale glow they cast over her marred skin, his words echoing listlessly in her head.

"I call _him_ a demon for your benefit, for the benefit of all. I call him demon because he, Onigumo, is nefarious and destructive, despicable and depraved, because he seeks to destroy all that you see as beautiful. Do you understand?"

Kagome shifted the Mage's jewelry, transferring it from one hand to another, feeling the clang and spark of magic as each ring bounced against another.

"Yes," she responded faintly, "I understand perfectly well." Her voice fell into a whisper, "Did you think I wouldn't? Is that why you didn't tell me? Was it so great a secret or were you afraid you would lose the Protector of your sword, that she would be unable to accept you, whatever you are?"

Sesshoumaru's shoulders rose fractionally and she knew she had hit him right were she shouldn't have, had pushed him up against the unmentionable.

Panic, fear, unease.

A warlord did not have such feelings, and a powerful otherworldly being would never grace them with a thought. But she did not care anymore, did not mind if she troubled him or unseated his authority because there were more important things than the dominanace of a former king of war.

She shook her head at him, suddenly greatly amused.

"Did you underestimate me again, Warlord? Did you think I was so weak that I would fear you? It changes nothing," she murmured, "not really. If it's only words then what does it matter? I am not so hung up on ideals and beliefs that I cannot change what I think. They call you demon. I am inclined to agree."

Sesshoumaru's head snapped around at her words, his eyes narrowing dangerously, trying to sort her out, find a meaning behind her words.

She bit her lip for a moment and then smiled up at his thunderous expression. "I am opting to call you that because both you and your brother give me hell. It seems only fair."

For a moment, his face was frozen in his distaste, but then, as her words faded into the moon filled night his features relaxed and his eyes, filled with distrust and wary anger gentled, and as always, there, at the corner of his lips where no one else could see, she watched him smile. And as it was between them, as they always seemed to find ways to throw the other off, he reached out and smoothed his hand along her lips, erasing the evidence of her worry.

Even after the vague warmth of his healing power had faded, his fingers remained. Kagome blinked at him from behind his large, steady hand, waiting for him to speak. But he seemed content to stare at her, scrutinize her, look at her as if he had never once seen her. For a brief and indiscernible second she felt his fingers press with more insistence, as if testing her reality, assuring himself that she existed.

"You should rest," he droned quietly.

"So should you."

And then, in a moment of pure indulgence and little thought, Kagome reached for his hand and turned it upright, depositing the golden rings into his cupped palm. Her cool, rough fingers closed over his, fisting the jewelry in his grasp.

"I'll come back for them tomorrow."

And then her fingers slipped away from his and she backed away, holding his gaze captive until the shadows and the trees swallowed him whole and the night beckoned sleep.

* * *

Sesshoumaru stood on the hill; his hands and arms limp at his sides, his head tilted up and back, watching the golden glow of the sunrise rise across the hill, light the dark leaves and grass shadows beneath him in orange and red and pink, and suddenly, with a shifting ray of light, the world was on fire.

He breathed in the cool, crisp morning and settled the angry silhouettes in his head, the voice that was clearly informing him that he had met his end again. His chin fell forward and he watched as the dark steps below his feet stretched and disappeared with the rising light.

It seemed as if it had been an entire waste, all of it. They had few answers and too many deaths. One, he thought, one was far too many. With the death of the Mage came the loss of ancient and powerful magic, magic he need to use, magic he had hoped would lead him closer to his ultimate end.

But as much as Sesshoumaru was a selfish creature, he was not so self-righteous to ignore the other, tired, pressing reasons that threatened to swallow him whole. It was such a ridiculous idea that he should be so affected by the loss of a comrade, one he had once thought had already passed into the void, had slipped between the gates of life and death. But it was true, he had watched the end of an era, the end of great magic, and the loss was sudden, it ate away at his edges, gnawed at the outside of his thoughts.

It reminded him too easily of the fragile nature of life. If even a great man of exceptional power could end his existence with a great sweep of his magic… how easy would it be to lose another, smaller being, one who was clumsy enough to kill herself if she tried?

He was stuck, was being toyed with by an all knowing something, if it even existed. Sesshoumaru was inclined, at that moment, standing upon a darkened hill, to think otherwise. He had grudgingly acknowledged the possibility of some overlapping great intertwining scheme, but there, so soon after he hit a dead end, so soon after the Mage willingly sacrificed himself because _he_, the sorcerer who defied time, believed it was his fate to die.

Fated to climb up a mountain, fated for the death of the man they needed. It made no sense, left them useless and weary, tired and broken.

"Why?" He asked the sunrise, wondering if it would give him a different answer than a snow covered mountain.

When the sun winked at him through the trees he looked away, parted the grasses at his feet and the brush at his side, stuck his large hand into his pocket and withdrew the Mage's only weapons, humming with his power.

He had wondered what sort of great magic would take weeks to perfect and use, and looking down at the gold in his hands he knew. Knew that the Mage had spent his time plotting his own death, finding a way to seal his power into an inanimate object.

Sesshoumaru shook his head and laughed harsh and low.

Idiotic man. Foolish sorcerer.

He had known all along what Kagome was. If there was one thing the Miroku had been it was an excellent liar. And because Sesshoumaru needed his expertise and help he let the man get away with wasteful hours and time uncounted. And because Sesshoumaru had needed him, had left him be, the man had adeptly circumvented his supposed one true need and found a way to bind Sesshoumaru into an untimely set of events.

If he had not known better he would have assumed that the man did it all on purpose, just to vex him, to prove a point.

So, the Mage had known Kagome's secret all along and had used her, in a very vague way, to save them all, to end their enemies and seal his power.

Riddles.

The damned sorcerer was nothing if full of them.

Sesshoumaru's Protector may have been the embodiment of the Shikon No Tama, but she certainly had no idea what to do with the powerful objects that had been relinquished to her.

Dead ends. Every damn place he turned, just like before. Only now, unlike before, he was further seeped in mystery and doubt.

To hell with riddles, to the devil with fate.

He was Sesshoumaru Taisho and he would find a way to end it all, even if he had to go through the underworld to do it.

The rise of the land flattened as he neared his estate. Quietly, with swift ease and practiced subtle ability, he slipped inside and made his way through the halls. When he stopped he faced Kagome's door, nearly closed, the soft sounds of her breathing reaching his ears.

Gently, with the utmost care he nudged the door open and walked inside, stepping over Ajax, who did nothing but roll over on his back and stick his head further under the mattress box, and made his way to her bedside.

He ran his fingers over the weapons, the jewelry in his hands one last time before laying them down on her bedside table. He drew away, but his eyes strayed, demanded to remain, danced across her face, half hidden by the blanket tucked around her, memorized the fall of her dark hair, the length of her lashes, the sigh of her dreams, and then was gone like the shadows, before his mind wandered into dangerous, treacherous, strange, and unwelcome territory.

* * *

When Kagome woke she was immediately disoriented. As soon as the sunlight flit across her eyes she sat up and threw her covers off, breathing raggedly. Memory plummeted away from dreams and she recalled where she was, who she was, what she was doing. And this brought with it a terrible headache.

For reasons unknown, she had woken in a panic, remembered, very faintly, the urgency and insistence of her dreams, and felt the alarm of too little time, bearing down on her.

The twinkle of gold and sunlight sparkled at the corner of her eye.

She turned to see the Mage's golden rings sitting harmlessly on her tabletop. She didn't have time to think or to collect her thoughts. All she could remember and feel was the horrible trapped sensation, the desperate abandon that she had experienced huddled in a tiny hut in the middle of a swaying plain of green.

Snatching the golden bracelets off her dresser she laid them before her, spreading them in a wide arc on the messy bedspread. They winked harmlessly at her in the morning sunlight.

"You bastards better help me out with this, because I have no idea what I am doing."

Whether it was her imagination or not, she thought they looked a little dimmer, properly admonished, settled against the cloth of the coverlet.

She closed her eyes and slowed her heart, pictured the rings before her, felt them as she had once felt the Mage, prodding around inside of her, breathed in once and fell back and within, snagged in something greater and brighter and more powerful than she.

And next to her lax hands, before her on the bed, the golden rings began to glow with azure light, rising into the morning, triumphant, victorious, smug.

* * *

Sesshoumaru was examining the length of his nameless sword, running a careful eye down its metal edges, balancing it on his finger, testing its magic and his control.

Inuyasha sat on the stone steps just outside the dojo floor, running a thumb across his dark katana, accounting for its flaws, relishing quietly in the beautiful sweep of its convex blade tip. He hissed sharply and happily as the edge caught along his thumb, drawing blood.

Sesshoumaru glanced at his brother with a frown before turning back to his own weapon, pleased, or placated, perhaps both, with the progress he had made since leaving his home for the monastery. He transferred the blade into his left hand and prepared to follow through with his daily routine of practice.

That, at least, would take his mind off of more pressing matters. If only for a little while.

He had hardly situated his sword between his fingers when he heard the distant roll of his name, echoing up from the house below the hill, bouncing off the trees and thundering up the stone steps.

At the edge of the practice area, Inuyasha had bolted to his feet and was peering down the path.

"It's Kagome," he muttered, shielding his eyes.

Sesshoumaru sheathed his sword and strode out of the dojo; resisting the urge to run..

It turned out, a breathless moment later, that he did not need to. Kagome came darting up the path, hair flying madly behind her, a short stout dog trailing after her, an air of mystery and excitement and power surrounding her leaping form. She flew up the last few steps to him and he had to reach out and stop her, enveloping her in his hands and arms, nearly bowled over by her eager steps.

She looked up at his with wide eyes and her fisted hands, clamped around the glowing jewelry of his former companion, braced themselves against his chest.

"Sesshoumaru" she sucked in air and coughed, sagging slightly, "Sesshoumaru, I know. I know."

"What?" He shook her slightly, fingers digging into her shoulders and arms, raising her up on her toes. "What do you know?"

She shook her head and exhaled shakily, trying to draw in her air, head slumping forward from dizzy exertion.

He disentangled one of his hands and pulled her chin upward.

"Kagome. What is it?"

Their eyes met.

"I know where we need to go. What we need to do. The Mage-" She hiccoughed over her words, "He- he was right. I did know what to do- Well, I didn't know, but I meditated and now I do."

"And?" He asked, impatient, apprehensive, feeling the world stretch and bend to the breaking point.

"You aren't going to believe this," she gasped breathlessly, "But I know! I know it's right. It's what he wanted. What was meant to be… or so he thought." She sucked in air through her nose and suddenly her excitement died, and she drew back a little, as if she had just realized whom she was leaning into, understood who he was.

When she spoke again her voice still trembled with breathless excitement, though it was considerably more subdued than before.

"I'm not sure you'll like it."

And that was how Sesshoumaru Taisho found himself on his private jet with a brother, a museum assistant, and a very spoiled dog in tow, and that was also how he found himself walking into the small private museum that Kagome had worked in.

And how he found himself staring down the accountant, Aeron Michaels, cursing colorfully under his breath, frozen in a marble hallway.


	32. Quiet Desperation

**Chapter 32**

**Quiet Desperation**

Kagura stumbled down the mountain, torn and bloody, her life clinging desperately to the shell she occupied, the wind she twisted relentless at her back. She had far overstayed her welcome, had used the element for her own gain and was facing the repercussions of her actions, was running from them.

The accursed Mage had planned for their downfall. He had been so sure of their failure that he willingly sacrificed himself to see it done.

Never, through all her years and all the warped, dark magic and torment she had lived and seen and experienced had she ever encountered something so profound that it bordered on clairvoyance. As the deep snowdrift bit through her torn and tattered clothes, she began to question her own ties and allegiances, her own blind luck.

She had died once, and had been brought back from the dark depths of the underworld. She had come near to death more times than she could count and each time, each and every moment in which she stared down into the gates of hell, she felt as if some great power had staved off her injury and untimely end.

This, she knew, was a dangerous thought, because if her master ever found out this tiny, flickering belief, she would surely die, swiftly, by his own hand.

The fear of him was too great and that fright, the lurch in her hallow chest, the quiver behind a cold, ruthless mind was the tiny glimpse she was given, the eclipse that occasionally besotted her mind. It was the one thing that made her think, made her twist up with blind uncertainty, made her wonder if their was good in her, if their was even a single redeeming quality.

Because most of the time she was depraved and wrong and evil and vindictive. She was dark and sharp and dangerous. She stayed in the shadows as best she could and cheated and found the edges to win her fight.

But really, her master's fight was not her own. She did not believe in his thoughts and ideals as much as others. She was too smart for that, for all that she was lacking in other areas of perception. Mostly, she was compelled to do what she did because she knew nothing but her master, the demon Onigumo.

She was what she was, and that was a slave, a servant of a great and powerful lord.

But when his control slipped, when he gave her a tiny ounce of her own mind, she would wander down paths that were not seeped in darkness, not bathed in blood.

They were strange and almost as frightening as the beast who held control over her, but there was something about freedom, the ability to think on her own and move on her own, with her own damned purpose that was blissfully liberating.

Yes, she served a demon. Yes, his cause was essentially hers, and yes, as times, she believed all the things he said, at times she wanted nothing but the end of Sesshoumaru, wanted nothing more than to see him die at the end of a sword-

But maybe, she thought, tumbling face first into a snow bank, lying listlessly in the cold, maybe she wanted an end to her adversary because it would mean and end to _her_ torment. Maybe if the demon finally won she would be free, would feel whole again. Because she was selfish she really did not care how the end was achieved. It would be best if she did not die again, and so that meant Onigumo was her greatest ally and her worst fear.

Her hands curled into fists and she watched as the slowly responding digits seeped blood onto the snow, and she asked herself, again, as she had every step of the way from the monastery, how she could have lived.

How could she have survived? How, how, how?

How did she survive her first attempt of the mountain, how did she survive her fall from the heights, how had she lived through another bout with Sesshoumaru, the great warlord that he was? How had she been enveloped and overcome with the sorcerer's magic and lived, had woken broken on some distant side of the mountain range?

How long she lay there she did not know.

Her dizzy, nebulous hold on the world was swaying and waning. But even through the haze of pain and confusion, she could feel the approach of her lord, speeding up the great mountains, fury fueling the host as it closed in.

He did not need to be present to strike fear in an empty, vacant soul. Even a small manifestation of his power was enough to make her wish she were dead.

It hovered over her, dark cape snapping in the wind, the breeze angry and tired, furious with its deception and the depravity to which it had been subject.

_'You failed.'_

She gasped as the sound ripped through her mind and tore at her eyes, driving her to the brink of insanity, holding her over the cliff and teasing her, taunting her, waiting to see what she should do before she was tossed to the void, ripped apart by the beast who owned her.

"I did everything you asked," she cried hoarsely, willing her weak muscles to move, pushing her head up out of the snow. "I went before the clan, I went to search for the girl. We bypassed all the protective spells. I found her at the heights, she was alone but _he_ came. She jumped from the rooftop and he saved her and he destroyed nearly all the forces the Wind Clan sent. The Mage disposed those that were left. He killed himself to save them. He used all his power to kill the remaining the spirits and their remaining power."

"I did everything," she sobbed brokenly, terror spinning out of control.

'_Why are you still alive_?'

Kagura shook her head weakly, her dark hair falling into fuzzy, unfocused eyes.

"I don't know," she whispered.

And it was truer than she wanted it to be.

She didn't understand why she existed. Why she continued to live in anguish and torment, why she was for nothing but treachery and death. Why was she made for depravity, and why, when she faced her master's enemies she felt his hate and wanted to see their blood on her hands. Why she followed his wishes only to end up at his feet-

No, not even _his_ feet, a shell, a being, a vessel of himself, staring coldly down at her like a manifestation of death itself, why?

"I don't know she repeated," checking her wailing breath, gritting her teeth, her words harsh and sharpened, her bloody finger tips breaking through the ice and snow beneath her.

"I don't know."

Darkness reached out and snagged her roughly, hauling her upright, bringing her up to face the nightmarish face that represented her master.

'_I do not possess compassion for traitors_.'

"_I did not betray you_! I don't know how I survived. I was right in the middle of it and when it was over I was on the other side of the mountain! I did not go back on my word. I am not a traitor!"

The red eye rolled in lazy, lethargic circles, the empty socket yawning beside it.

'_Did you make contact with your spy_?'

"No," she hissed out painfully, trying to loosen herself form the excruciating hold on her body. "I never found him."

'_Then, perhaps, if he has survived, he will find us. You have disappointed me_, _let us hope he does not_.'

The vessel dropped her back to the snowy hole she had been hauled from.

'_Time will only tell if you have truly kept your word, if you are still loyal to me_.'

In the snow, the demoness shuddered and wrapped her achingly cold fingertips around the edges of her ripped and tattered kimono.

She felt weak, used, powerless, dominated… she felt _mortal_.

Cowering under the shadow of the beast she was nothing but a frightened woman, fearing for her life.

The shadow, the whipping black tendrils, the corpse slid away and into the shadows, disappearing, leaving her to drag herself upright and find her own way back to his side, and for the first time in her second life, Kagura, the wind demoness, the thing, the being created for the sole purpose to appease a demonic master, felt the undying need to do that which she had never thought to attempt before.

As she rose shakily to her feet her mind spun over all the ways she could betray her captor and her lord, all the ways she could sneak, connive, cheat, and lie to rip his power out from under him, to show him what it was to lose power, to give him a taste of helplessness.

With a single step, she started forward, thoughts of dark betrayal providing her with the strength to move, the will to find her way back to her master.

* * *

Aeron stared.

Kagome blinked.

Sesshoumaru frowned.

Ajax barked.

Inuyasha stumbled in through the doors, dragging rainwater with him, scowling.

For an entire minute everyone remained where they were, frozen, except for the corgi, which appeared to lose interest in Aeron and decided to sniff the soil in a nearby exotic, potted plant.

"Kagome?"

She smiled wearily at him and raised her hand in greeting.

He blinked for a moment at her, as if thoroughly confused and disbelieving. He walked toward them, carefully, cautiously, eying the men behind her with doubt, as if they would leap at him and rip his throat out if he made any sudden movements.

Which, Kagome consented, might have been more or less true.

The lanky accountant stopped before them, a good ten feet away, brow furrowed, eyes dark and worried.

Because she had nothing else to say, she settled for, "Hey."

"…Hi," he murmured, gaze flickering to Sesshoumaru and then to Inuyasha, brooding, arms folded over his chest, glaring at Aeron so fiercely he might as well have been trying to light the man on fire with the intensity of his gaze.

"Um." Aeron said.

Behind her, Sesshoumaru made an impatient noise.

Kagome ignored him and stepped forward, slipping her hands into her jacket pocket, studying the face of the man before her.

She opened her mouth to speak to him, to attempt to explain but he beat her to it, his deep voice almost indiscernible from the sound of the rain against the windowpane.

"You look different," he spoke quietly, measuring her up, examining her like she was a figment of his imagination, come to haunt him.

Bemused, she asked, "Do I?"

He gave her a lopsided grin and his hands threaded their way up to his slipping glasses, where he pushed them up off the bridge of his nose to rub his eyes.

"Yeah, you do."

They stared at one another for a moment and in the brief amount of time that Kagome took to study his face, she found something different there in him, too.

But, then from behind her, she felt Sesshoumaru's annoyance and Inuyasha's bristling distaste and she winced an apology at the man before her.

"Do you think I could talk to you? For a little while?"

Aeron's eyes slipped from her face to the men behind her and then found her emerald gaze again.

Where she expected to meet fierce opposition she was given nothing but a discreet raise of the shoulders, a careless, flippant shrug.

"Sure," he agreed easily, "I was on my way out anyway."

Kagome frowned, confused by his easy acceptance, his seeming lack of interest. But there, behind the glare of his glasses, behind hooded and carefully guarded eyes, she saw his curiosity, his nervousness, everything that he would not show in his face.

He was such a strange man, anyway.

She had almost forgotten.

Standing before him in the museum she had dedicated a good part of her life to, one of the things she had used to overcome her sorrow, one of the ways she had pushed aside her grief and walled it up so thoroughly it took her sitting atop a mountain to confront it, she found her self unexpectedly experiencing a stitching of memory, and the sensation left her feeling ill.

She didn't like standing in the hallway where she had felt so empty and alone on so many days for so many years. It was like stripping away the new woman she had become and allowing the old sorrowful one back out.

It was lucky Aeron was already gesturing for her to lead the way, for she feared something horrible would happen should she stand there long enough. She felt as if the marble floor beneath her feet would open wide and swallow her whole and she would wake, alone in her apartment from a dream of magic, and she would be back the way she had been, before the unreal and surreal invaded and took hold of her life.

Kagome passed by Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha, each staring down the tall, lanky man behind her as if he were a dreadful enemy, a man not to be trusted.

She didn't blame them much. They were slow to give their confidence and acceptance, and at times she wondered how she had gained it, wondered how she had cracked their dark exteriors and their hardened emotions.

And, not to mention, they were quite frightening, standing in all their glory, backlight by grey rain and black shadows of war. Even swordless they presented a picture of magnificence and wonder.

It was a mystery how more people did not know who they were.

To Kagome, they were not of the regular world, were something far greater and mysterious and powerful. It seemed wrong that they had to stand behind her and wait to see where fate led them. But Kagome was not without a sense of humor, or in the case before her, a sense of irony, and at times she could not help but smile benignly and shake her head at the scenarios they were led into.

Because of course, even after all she had seen and endured; she would be led back to Worthington.

It was irony at its best… or its worst.

Kagome sighed and pushed open the door of the museum. Behind her, Aeron slipped by Sesshoumaru, carefully avoiding the warlord's vicious eyes. There was a sharp whistle from Inuyasha and Ajax came running, splashing through the puddles of the sidewalk, drenching their feet with the joyous dance of his feet.

Before them a shiny black limo waited, the hard top collecting with rainwater, a thin and airy mist against their eyes, glistening in their hair.

Aeron stopped short besides her, staring down at the car. He turned a pale, grey face toward her and muttered in low tones, "You aren't going to murder me and toss me in one of the bays are you?"

Kagome stared at him, bewildered, "Why would I do that?"

He shrugged and his eyes slid to the silent men behind them. "I wasn't really referring to you."

She blinked away the misty rain falling into her eyes and sighed. "They're just grumpy. We flew for the better part of a day and only just arrived here."

His dark eyebrows rose and disappeared into his dark, falling hair, swept across his creased brow.

"You came straight here?" He asked incredulously.

She nodded, watching his face as it darkened, his eyes shift nervously.

"Well," he finally murmured, "I suppose we should go someplace where you can tell me exactly why you traveled so far to see me." And without another word he opened the limo door and slipped inside, closely followed by a short, wet dog, intent on a tummy rub.

Kagome bit her lip and took a step forward but was halted by the unexpected grasp of fingers on her shoulder. Inuyasha slipped past her, eyeing her from the corner of his dark gaze, and she was turned around to face Sesshoumaru, unhappy and displeased, standing out in the rain.

"You are absolutely sure of this?"

Wearily she nodded, her head dropping forward, rain trickling over her forehead and down the plane of her nose, small droplets falling off the end to pool at the large puddle her feet were immersed in.

"I am sure of what I saw in the vision, what I felt from what is left of the Mage." She raised her face again and looked at him. "I can't give you a better guarantee than that. I know you don't trust him, and you have every right not to. You expected that it would be the Mage with us, that we would be well on out way to freeing the Wood Spirit. But, Sesshoumaru, we aren't, we're here because for some unknown and idiotic reason nothing works out the way we want it to. I have no real clue why it would be him, of all people. Why we would be led back to the beginning…" She trailed off, wincing, thinking of history and stories and tales.

"Or the beginning of my part. Maybe, _maybe_ he knows something. I'm sure the Mage had reasons. What they were I obviously don't know. I'm not sure how often Aeron frequented monasteries in Tibet, but I can guess it was not very often. So maybe, just maybe," she had closed her hand over his then, was gently removing his fingertips from her shoulder, was staring up into his eyes, swirling with anger and impatience, "maybe, this is all a part of it, as stupid and idiotic as it seems. Just let me talk to him. Let me tell him what he needs to know."

Sesshoumaru stared down at her for a very long minute, eyes dancing across her features, deciding, probably, she assumed, not to draw his sword and kill Aeron for his audacity to live and somehow unknowingly becoming involved in their terribly awkward and intricate quest.

"Please, please, don't scare him off," she pleaded sincerely, "And don't kill him or threaten with bodily harm. He's not like us."

She caught a glance of a sharpened canine as he smiled. "_You_ are not like us." His voice was steady and serious, but she saw the laughter in his eyes, the dark, amused mirth.

She scowled at him. "You know what I mean. He's horribly practical and not at all whimsical. I'll be lucky if he listens to a word out of my mouth before he brushes me off and tells me I am insane. I don't need you and Inuyasha flashing your swords to help me through this."

Sesshoumaru's head turned and he looked away, down the street, watched the cars speeding by, the people under their umbrellas, his face passive and blank.

"He is a coward."

"That's not what I am saying-"

"No," he agreed, glancing down at her, "I said it."

Kagome reached up and wiped the moisture off her face, her green eyes flashing dangerously. "You don't even know him. I hardly do either. Perhaps we can leave the assumptions until after I have had a chance to speak to him. Can we go somewhere-"

"My home-"

"But-"

Sesshoumaru leveled her with a heavy, measured look and she cut herself off. She wasn't much in a mood to argue with him because time was pressing on and she didn't really have the energy.

She was tired, weary, so much so that no amount of sleep would cure her of the ache in her gut.

The being before her must have seen the exhaustion on her face, the drop in her shoulders because his eyes narrowed and his stark features softened and he watched her carefully.

"I," he began with stunted words, difficulty measured in the strength behind each syllable, "am not trying to make this difficult for you."

Kagome pressed a cool hand to her forehead, letting her eyes slide shut, quieting her thoughts.

"No, I know. I'm just…" She exhaled shakily and smiled up at him through the damp bangs clinging to her face, "I just didn't expect this either."

"You?" He asked, controlled disbelief lightening his crisp tone. "Kagome, do not let me underestimate you now. I was under the impression you knew all."

She chuckled weakly and shook her head, "You're the only one who thinks that then."

They stood for time uncounted, listening to the rain, as if they were, both of them, afraid to see what would happen next, to see what twisted path upon which they had been dropped. But time waited for no one, not even the great Sesshoumaru, the man, the being, the creature who had protected her a hundred times over, who stared down death, and reaped destruction. He smiled, flashed his teeth, was, before her, the son of a dog demon, and however much they loathed the idea, however much they wished not to follow, they continued on, slipped into the vehicle and drove onward into the distant future.

* * *

Aeron's hand gripped the wine glass between large, sweating fingers. Kagome had assured him that he would want a drink, had downed one of her own before even opening her mouth to speak.

Now, she sat before him, huddled into herself, staring at his face, an empty goblet hanging precariously in her lax fingers. At a large window in the back of the shadowy, dim room, the man- _Ash_, she had called him- was perched, lit by the grey mid-afternoon sunlight, shaded by the lack of light in the room. His face was thunderous; Aeron could see the darkened expression even from where he sat, hunched over on a large couch across the room. The man had not moved since they had sat down, had not shifted his eyes from the verdant green lawn outside the streaked window pane, had not shown any sign of interest in Kagome's words, except for the very slight movement of his thumb against a dark sword, held against his side.

Every few words out of Kagome's mouth were punctuated by the slight, soft sound of metal scraping in and out of a scabbard. Aeron eyed the glint of the sword, shinning, hardly visible, nothing but an inch of forged steel, glimmering against the dark shape of the man framed in the window.

But it was not the sword at that man's side that inspired a cold, steady sweat to trickle down his neck, that sucked the moisture from his mouth, and made his hands clammy as they remained firmly placed against his thighs and around the stem of the wine glass. It was the man behind him, standing perfectly still, arms crossed over his chest, bright eyes narrowed and centered on the back of Aeron's dark, sweating head that made him want to smile politely at Kagome and tell her he was late for a dentist appointment.

He had been introduced to his great authority before, had seen it and had thoroughly disliked it. But _now_-

He was positively frightening. He exuded power, like nothing Aeron had ever seen or felt. It rippled off of him, tinged the air around him, made it difficult to breathe. He was so entirely distracting that the nervous accountant had to command his eyes back to Kagome, had to force them to stay on the young woman in front of him and not slide off to check on the whereabouts of the tall, pale authoritarian presence behind.

But Kagome had stopped talking, had been staring expectantly at him for five full minutes.

Aeron had the distinct feeling he had fallen into an alternate universe.

"So," he started awkwardly, brow pinching as he frowned, his brain trying to remember all of her hushed and hurried words.

"So…. Um."

She said nothing, only worried her lip between her teeth. At the window Ash shifted, caught Aeron in the corner of his hooded eye, exhaled sharply, disdainfully, and turned back to the window, his thumb moving to the sword again, the staccato beat of sliding metal beginning to filter throughout the room.

"So," he tried a third time, swallowing, trying to work his tongue around his dry mouth. "You," he pointed at Kagome, "are some sort of… protectorate-"

"_Protector_," Ash interrupted impatiently, "She is the Protector."

Aeron shifted, fumbled with his glasses, and pushed them up his nose. "Right, er… you are the Protector of an ancient sword."

Kagome nodded once and bit her lip again, wincing.

"And it sent umm… Mr. Taisho… to collect you because you must keep the blade safe?"

There was a rustle of movement behind him and he winced, waiting to see if he would be killed for some unknown transgression. When nothing bad befell his person he straightened a little, and saw Kagome nod again in confirmation.

"And you were given visions which led you to a wood spirit, which led you to the monastery where one of your comrades fell, which led you to me?"

A dark head dipped once and he exhaled shakily, sinking back into the couch. He reached for his neck and loosened his tie.

"Are you sure?" He asked weakly.

Kagome offered him a tiny smile. "No. Not entirely. But, the Mage was sure. He told me I would know what to do. This is as near as I can come to knowing." She paused and glanced down at the empty wine goblet in her hand, twirling it with her fingers, watching the light dance along the rim. "I meditated over the monk's jewelry. It was how he stored his power, or so Se-" she cut herself off and swallowed, "Or so Taisho says. He gave them to me and I was given a vision of you. And now here we are."

Aeron ran a hand over his face, struggling with disbelief.

"I- I, ok. I…" He grimaced, "I can't think. Can I get some fresh air? Any possibility?"

Kagome looked up at Taisho, as still as a statue, fixed behind the couch, who, apparently gave his consent, because the next moment she was rising and walking to the door of the room. Aeron rose shakily, casting a furtive glance at the two men, watching him as they would a hardened criminal, as if at any moment he would try something, as if they could not stand the sight of him. His dark eyes found Kagome's back again and he hurried out into the hall and then out a door and into the rain.

He sighed his relief and welcomed the cool feel of the world around him.

* * *

"What do you think?" Inuyasha asked darkly, shifting in the windowsill, peering out through the glass, watching the indistinct forms of Kagome and the accountant.

Sesshoumaru made his way over to a window along the same wall, leaning a forearm against its edges, his eyes roving the estate, catching a shadow, following Kagome's figure around a bend in a modest path.

"I think, wherever he is, the Mage is having a wonderful laugh at our misfortune."

Inuyasha snorted loudly. "You don't think he _purposefully_ chose that man do you?"

Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed, closed in on the tall shadow of the accountant.

"I do not think it is as simple as that, no."

"How do you mean?"

Sesshoumaru sighed and reached a hand out, pushing the window open to let the cool breeze inside, the sound of the rain to fill the room.

"It is more than dumb luck and irony and coincidence that lead us back here. For all this seems a horrible, ghastly misunderstanding, I have a dark and unpleasant feeling that it is not anything remotely close to accident or serendipity.

"This is where I found Kagome. In all the places in the entire world this is far from the most remote or magical or extraordinary. But it was here that I found her. And when I first saw her, followed her, I was not alert or aware of much else. A blunder on my part. When first I saw her I was using a spell scroll, one of the O-fuda.

"I did not know if she would recognize me, if by some stroke of luck or misfortune she knew of me, too. I wanted to observe her and see who she was. I followed her on her lunch break, watched her from the back of the shop, and _he_, the accountant saw me."

Inuyasha went still and the air became strained. "He saw through the talisman? That hides almost anything from mortal eyes!"

Sesshoumaru smiled cruelly. "And yet he saw me. Only a great Mage, a sorcerer, a powerful being could see through one. Never have I met a mortal who could break the spell without severe training, without the knowledge of such things. At the time I believed the spell had lost its power. They were in my possession for a very long time and I was not concerned with _him_.

"But at strange, flashing, inconsistent moments I believe I see power in him. I think I may have felt it before. When I first met him my sorcery was weak, much weaker than it is now. And with the sword so near… things were jumbled and difficult to discern. I overlooked what I should not have.

"And of all the men in the world, of all the people who could have been given this strange fragment of the puzzle, why should it be this man, a man who has no knowledge of magic and the world we come from? A man who knows Kagome?"

Inuyasha tapped a finger against the window and by his hesitation Sesshoumaru knew he was unnerved and uncomfortable with the all the possibilities in the man walking out in the garden.

"Do you think… there was something between them? Maybe, if she unconsciously channels power she inadvertently chose him?"

Sesshoumaru frowned and leaned against the sill, knuckles clenching to white as they gripped the wood beneath his fingers.

"No. Again, I do not think it is as simple as that. There are forces at work here that have been in place for a very long time. Longer than a few hurried months. Perhaps," he murmured, leaning forward and toward the rain, "perhaps they have been working since before she was even born. And perhaps," his voice was almost swallowed by the gentle sigh of the rain, "we will never know."

The two brothers lapsed into uneasy silence, each trying and failing to keep his eyes away from the two figures in the garden.

"Do you think we can trust him?"

Sesshoumaru laughed out loud, the sound jarring and strange in the quiet day. "I trust no one."

The sound of a sword sliding out of its sheath and back again reached his ears, and even though Inuyasha said nothing, Sesshoumaru could hear his brother's voice, ringing out, calling him a liar.

He did not have the desire to argue, to state that he was not, that his word was always true.

Because inside his head he was quite agreeing with his brother's unspoken statement.

He was a liar, if only because he had made the worst mistake in his entire long and endless life, trusting a tiny young woman and her word.

* * *

"Thanks," Aeron said shakily, passing a hand over the back of his neck, working his head back and forth, cracking his spine and relieving the tension that had built up within him.

Kagome watched him but said nothing; too worried she would scare him away if she spoke again.

They wandered along a broken stone path, winding its way, lazily, over gently sloping green grass, under a few large trees, against the tall green hedges bordering the wrought iron fence.

"So it's all true then?" He asked her quietly, as if he feared the other two men overhearing him.

Her hands found their way to her pockets and she fell in step beside him. "Yes."

"How is that possible?"

Kagome shrugged absentmindedly, eyes careening off into the verdant canopy above them, blinking against the fall of the rain. "I have no idea. But it is. It's very real and very true. I saw the demon… or his shell… here, at this very house, the day after Taisho walked into that museum like he owned it. I've seen lots of things," she whispered, pushing thoughts of the Mage away, shunting it to the back of her mind.

"Besides," she started slowly, finally looking him in the eye, "wasn't it _you_ who told _me_ that sometimes things really _are_ just a mystery?"

Aeron sighed and shoved his hands into his rumpled and creased dress pants. "I may have. I don't remember much very well anymore. Things have been so strange lately."

Kagome barked a laugh, "You have no idea."

The man paused on the path and glanced back at the mansion, looming pristine in the eaves of trees.

"He isn't bad is he? You're sure you're on the right side?"

Her green eyes flickered to the windows of the house, where she knew, without any reasonable doubt, that man was watching her, golden gaze trained on her.

"He's not bad or evil. He's an anti-hero in the greatest sense of the idea. But in no way is he evil. No. He may not seem like a being that would willingly sacrifice to save the world, but I don't think there is anyone else who could do it so well as he. And anyway, I can't think of a single person who always thinks selflessly. He is what he is and that is certainly a mystery and a conundrum. He's difficult to understand and he doesn't make it easy for you to."

Aeron was looking at her as she spoke, as her eyes caught and held a gaze she could not see. "Ah," she heard him breathe, unraveling something great, seeing something in her.

"What?"

He blinked down at her through the moisture on his glasses. "You really have changed. I can hear it when you speak and I can see it in your face. You are a very different woman than when you left. When you talk about it all… when you talk about him…" he stared off into a corner of the yard, "you are different. Though, I can see why. It's quite a life-changing ordeal, becoming a fellow savior of the world. Trading up, I see."

"Don't be so sure of that. There's a lot of death and unpleasant things involved. None of which I faced when I worked at Worthington."

Aeron turned back to the path, kicking a stone as he ambled. "But you wouldn't go back."

"No."

He nodded, eyes trained on his foot's process with the rock. "Did you ever have the feeling like you were part of something bigger? Something so great it was out of your reach? Before, I mean. Before you became something great?"

Kagome laughed a little, quietly gratified by his words. "I wanted to be. Sometimes I would. There were times when I knew that things would happen before they did, like I could taste the day in the air. Like there was something hovering before me and I wasn't quick enough to see it. Like I lived in the shadow of some great influence that was just beckoning me to find it."

"Yeah," Aeron mumbled into his chest, "that's what I mean."

"Then, yes, yes I did."

They passed by a large trellis, overgrown with green ivy, hanging down between weathered slats of wood. Kagome was about to pass over the threshold when a large hand stopped her progress, pulled her back out of the rain.

"While I'm surprised to see you here, I'm not shocked by what you have said to me." He paused, wouldn't look at her, was fixated with his feet. "When you left, I had the most overwhelming urge to find you, to make sure you were safe. At first I thought it was nothing more than customary concern. But it went far beyond that. It was all consuming. I guess you didn't know. Have you been home?"

She shook her head.

"Ah, well. Ignore the messages on your voicemail. Actually, throw it away. I might have used up all your tape. Anyway," he continued, awkwardly, carefully, "I couldn't explain why I felt that way. It went well above concern, went far beyond something I would do for a young woman I worked with. And, it wasn't that I was trying to interfere with your life or make some shoddy attempt to get your attention, it wasn't anything like that. It was this desperate need to know you were safe, to know you were in good hands."

He looked up from underneath his dark, unruly hair and smiled gently. "Have you ever seen me as anything but rude and sarcastic?"

Kagome had to say she hadn't.

"My personality, all the dark, gloomy rude parts of me fled into something else. It was like I wasn't me anymore. Like something else was guiding me, pushing me along a path to worry for you… as strange as that sounds.

"And then I started to have these dreams, these strange flashes of ideas and thoughts. Sometimes they were so real I could swear I was actually _there_." He disentangled a hand from his pocket and smoothed it over his mouth and jaw, eyes becoming haunted and hollowed. "I think that I dreamed of him, your Mage, the sorcerer. I think he saw me, I think he knew who I was, or something. Because I swear to you, Kagome, I have never felt anything as real and as truly as I did when I stood in the midst of the snow, surrounded by mountains. It was more real than you, standing there before me.

"And sometimes, my dreams and my visions would show me you. I could never see where you were or what you were doing. Sometimes I couldn't even see your face, but I knew _instinctively_ that it was you. Knew it without a doubt. I don't truly understand what is happening and I don't know why it is happening to us. I don't know what it has to do with me.

"I'm not sure how I am supposed to help you. Am I even meant to? I suppose I am, somehow, though I cannot even fathom…"

He smiled down at her, shaking his head, disbelief paling his skin, darkening his eyes. "I'm just an accountant."

Kagome reached out a hand and gently placed it on his arm, tugging at the damp white shirt, pulling his attention back to her. "I thought I was nothing but a museum assistant."

The man stared at her, held her gaze in his own, studied her like he was seeing her for the first time, like he saw something worthwhile and extraordinary in her face.

"No, you are much more than that. You are much more. I can see it now. I knew it before, somehow. I was drawn to you. I wanted to know you. For simple reasons and for those that I cannot even find words to explain. Maybe there is more to life than I thought. Maybe I am the man you are looking for? But if I am-"

"If you are then its just another piece of the puzzle," she interrupted, soothing him with words she needed to hear, needed to say, "I had and still have no idea what I am doing. Things just seem to fall into place. Somehow I got involved in something bigger. It's as if everything is intertwined and preset and we're just a step behind, following the breadcrumbs of fate. It's a ridiculous notion, really, intertwining destiny," she finished sarcastically, wryly.

"So, what is it that you are asking me to do?"

Kagome reached within her jacket pocket, fingers digging deep, and pulled out the Mage's gold rings, shimmering in her hand.

"For now? Keep an open mind about all of this." She extended her hand to him and he slowly raised his arm, palm up. Gingerly, with reluctance and wistful worry, she deposited the rings in his large hand.

"These were his. It seems all the inanimate objects surrounding our quest know more than we do. Perhaps these will give us our answers."

Aeron stared down at the gold in his hand, gently weighed the trinkets, bouncing them to hear the sound of their jingling, and as each ring touched another, a spark of magic lit, glowed, and flowed outward, illuminating his face with vague, azure shadows. His brow drew down and he brought the objects closer to his face, staring with great concentration, the gold reflected in the darkness of his eyes, the light dispelling the momentary shadows from his face.

His free hand moved and one long finger prodded experimentally at the golden weapons, housing the Mage's greatest power.

Almost as if to respond, the metal circlets glimmered, dancing patterns circling around the edges, a strange power beginning to build around the man. A wind anchoring from his palm blew outward, pushed his hair away from his face, arced up and around, caressed and whipped about his trousers and shirt.

Kagome took a step back, her hands reaching behind her, entwining around the trellis, fingers digging into the wood and ivy, splinters working their way into her skin. She hardly noticed, so enraptured with the scene before her.

In the distance, out of the corner of her busy eye, she saw a dark and a light shape appear, the two brothers freezing as they saw the scene before them, the man, clenching the Mage's greatest possession in his hands, the sorcery of a dead man surging around his lanky form.

The soundless wind intensified, pulled at Kagome, plucked at her, called her toward the eye of the storm, an accountant, a man who believed in facts and figures, and she could not help herself, had to take a step back.

A hand touched her shoulder.

Sesshoumaru stood beside her, a little farther back, his eyes narrowed, his mythic weapon in his empty hand.

Before them, light blazed and surged.

She held up a hand in front of sensitive eyes, and turned her face away from the power gathering underneath the trees, sliding across the perfectly manicured lawn. She could no longer make out the man amongst the bright inferno. He had disappeared into midnight and the wind of a mountain, hidden from her gaze.

She felt the strong fingers on her shoulder tighten.

"I think it's ok," she whispered breathlessly over the shudder of the air, the vibration of sorcery.

Her Protector did not seem to share her thoughts, but he did not move or speak, remained trained on the scene before them, face drawn in dark displeasure.

And then, like the snuffing of a candle, it was over, the light and wind instantly dissipating, leaving the three companions to stare at a dark man, standing frozen in the garden.

He was staring at his wrist where the golden rings resided, gleaming contentedly. He raised his other arm and stared at the gleaming circlets, grouped together about his forearm.

"I guess the Mage was right," Inuyasha murmured behind Kagome and Sesshoumaru.

Aeron snapped out of his absorption as the man spoke, his sharp eyes focusing on the three, watching eagerly.

And then the unexpected happened.

He smiled… and his eyes twinkled.

Kagome felt her heart flutter in nervous anticipation and disbelief.

Aeron lowered his arms, the easy grin spreading across his face, lighting in his dark eyes, creasing across his brow and his cheeks.

"I suppose you did find the right man. Your Mage must have been a very powerful sorcerer. I can feel him still. He left a very large part of himself in these."

Kagome hesitated before taking a ginger step forward, peering at him through her dark hair falling all over her rain soaked face. Sesshoumaru's hand slipped from her shoulder but she didn't wander far, knew he would not appreciate it.

"Are you alright?" She asked Aeron, head cocked to the side, examining him carefully, trying to place the strange and enigmatic change in him.

He thought for a moment, "Yes, I think so. I feel all right. Different… but alright."

"Different how?" Sesshoumaru rumbled dangerously.

Aeron frowned and glanced around the garden as if he had only just realized where they were.

"Hmmm," he hummed to himself, eyes darting around for a few moments before centering back on the pale warrior. "I feel cheerful, Sesshoumaru."

Kagome stifled a small gasp and spun on her heel. "Um! I need to speak with Aeron alone again. Now. Please."

For a moment she thought the warlord was going to ignore her and pull his sword and make an example out of the suddenly sassy mathematician. But after a very strained and darkly dangerous moment his gaze flickered back to Kagome and he pivoted and strode back to the house past a gaping Inuyasha.

"_Ash_," Kagome hissed at him, jerking her head toward the house.

Inuyasha jumped, startled by the vehemence in her voice. Abruptly he turned and followed the angry, murderous trail of his older brother, casting curios glances over his shoulder. When he disappeared into the manor, Kagome turned back around.

"Firstly, most importantly it should probably be noted that testing… Sesshoumaru… is not in your best interest."

"I wasn't," Aeron responded idly.

"Right. Well… He doesn't like you and he doesn't trust you and those two things are probably a really bad combination. But secondly, _how in the bloody hell did you know his name_?"

Aeron adjusted the glasses on the bridge of his nose before leaning his head back to examine the leaves of the ivy above his head. He reached out a long arm and his fingers clasped around the vines, plucking at them curiously.

Rather absently, he replied, "When you first left I was worried-"

"Yes," Kagome snapped testily, folding her arms over her chest glaring up at him, "We've established that."

Aeron continued to run his hands across the leaves, ignoring the drops of water falling on his upturned face. "Well, I checked into the myth, the legend that Sesshoumaru told you- I know a professor of such things- and he did a little research for me. He found the name, Sesshoumaru's name, in some old manuscript somewhere. And, of course, just now, the Mage's weapons, trinkets, er- whatever these are, informed me of his name."

Kagome's arms fell limp at her side. "They what?"

"You said the inanimate objects of your quest knew more than you."

The young woman sputtered in surprise and indignation, "I did! But!"

The accountant released the leaf he had been tormenting and shrugged thoughtlessly. "There's a lot of magic in these. It's humming just under my skin, whispering in the back of my mind. Funny… It's familiar. It almost feels like the thing that has been pushing me, has been at the back of my mind for so very long."

"And you aren't surprised at all by this sudden development? This magic you've unexpectedly tapped into?"

Aeron ran a hand through his hair, pulling a sour look as his black locks flopped over onto his glasses. "Of course I'm surprised. I do not regularly experience magic. I am simply suffering the side effects of these rings," He held up his arm and shook it and the metal danced and sounded out pleasantly.

"Well, he certainly was a jovial fellow. It wouldn't really surprise me if he left part of his attitude to spite Sesshoumaru."

Aeron smiled at her, bemused. "As it would seem he did."

Kagome sidled a little closer. "Is it temporary?"

Aeron's hands found their way to his pant's pockets. "Probably. Who's to say?"

"Well, you are. You're the only clue we have right now."

The man held up a finger, effectively silencing her with the affable expression plastered over his face. "Not entirely true."

"Do you know something I don't?"

Aeron nodded. "I know many things you don't. And vice versa. But first, I have to take advantage of my good mood and careless attitude before it leaves me dull and lifeless, like I am on so often an occasion."

Kagome was about to ask him what he was taking about when he reached down and wrapped her in a hug.

"I really am glad you are alright, Kagome."

Before she could reciprocate, before she could think past the iron clamp around her shoulders and arms, he released her and brushed past.

"Come on, I have to get my affairs in order. And pack… and lease my apartment…. And…"

Kagome stared after him, at a complete loss.

"Aeron, what are you taking about?"

"The next piece of the puzzle!" He paused on the path back to the house. "We're going back to Japan of course."

And without so much as an explanation, he turned and disappeared into the manor, humming a tune, carrying the deep and dangerous and powerful magic of the Mage, his good mood and benevolent humor tingeing the air with fiery blue hues, wrapping around a confused young woman, standing alone in the rain.

* * *

"He's been sitting back there with his eyes closed for the past six hours," Inuyasha whispered to Kagome, who merely narrowed her eyes at him and turned back to the small window next to her seat.

Sesshoumaru, seated across from her, watched her face for signs of worry or anxiety, but those had long since fled.

It seemed she had given up her hope to ever receive a straight answer out of anyone. As she had morosely moaned to him, she was to remain, in her words, forever in the dark.

This was true in more ways than she knew.

After all, Sesshoumaru still had yet to tell her about the Mage's most important findings, about _what_ she was. But he was having a rather difficult time formulating a plan as to how said hypothetical conversation would go. Her innate curiosity would not be sated with a simple off handed explanation and in all honesty, he did not blame her.

The Mage's words replayed in his head every quiet moment he had, echoed and tumbled about until he was driven to the brink of his sanity, until all he wanted to do was draw his sword and shove it through something.

At the moment his intended target was sitting in the back of the plane, eyes closed, fastidiously ignoring a corgi sitting on his feet, golden bracelets shimmering with unchecked power.

If he hadn't thought Kagome would throw a fit he probably would have killed the accountant, if only because he was interrupting the flow of things.

Everything had been going so well until the Mage and probably, maybe, Fate had interfered. But Sesshoumaru was willing to look past this and place all the blame on a solitary individual sitting in the back of his private jet plane. Was willing and ready.

Well… he was willing and his sword was ready.

As he thought such dark and delicious thoughts his fingers rhythmically gripped the blade hilt resting against his seat, and his mind played out the possible scenarios in which he could accidentally run his forged metal into the gut of the man who was impeding his quest.

A very graphic and colorful version of his plot, one involving a clumsy fall onto an accidentally unsheathed nameless sword was interrupted when Kagome sighed and turned to face him.

"I honestly believe we are more in the dark than we were before. We're back to where we were before we saw the Wood Spirit." She drew her legs up to curl around the leather cushion, her skirt falling away from her knees to reveal her legs to Sesshoumaru's gaze.

His eyes traveled over the sight and suddenly he didn't mind that his murderous plots had been interrupted. The diversion was a welcome one, he decided, attempting not to be too obvious about his pendulum mood swing.

She was speaking again and it took a little more time than was usual to drag himself out of his shell and focus on her words.

"…even if he is somehow being imbued with the Mage's powers there is no guarantee he'll know how to use them. What can we do then? Go back to the spirit and try to help anyway? We can't consign her to death. For one it isn't right, I made a promise, and two, she knows something."

Inuyasha yawned and stretched out his legs into the aisle, lazily throwing an arm over the empty seat next to him. "_He_," he pointed his thumb over his shoulder and rolled his eyes, "seems to think he knows what he is doing."

Kagome gnawed on her lip, white teeth flashing against the raw, disturbed skin. "He may very well know what he's doing. I had visions that led us this far and from what he told me, he was having visions while we were out on our quest. He saw the Mage and the monastery. He seems to think he has also been experiencing a feeling similar to what I used to feel, before I met you," her eyes swept over to Sesshoumaru before they drifted back to Inuyasha. "When I left he said he became unusually worried and agitated, that he didn't act like himself. And he said that even before I left he felt… drawn to me. Perhaps he has always been a part of this, was always meant to join us? I don't know." She frowned and her teeth sank into her lips, drawing blood.

Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow as she winced and continued to chew, biting nervously.

"Maybe," Inuyasha groused. "I still don't like or trust him."

"You didn't like or trust me when you first met me."

Inuyasha scowled. "He's different."

"This isn't going to work if you treat him with disrespect. If he is a part of this you will have to accustom yourself to him. He's not a bad guy-"

"No, he's just incredibly unpredictable. Honestly, who switches back and forth like that? It's like he has two personalities!"

Kagome pressed the palms of her hands to her eyes and grimaced. "I already told you, he's suffering from the Mage's magic. I think the good-natured sorcerer might have put _too_ much of his personality into his weapons. He isn't normally pleasant."

"Oh, excellent, all the more reason to have him around," Inuyasha exclaimed sarcastically.

"That isn't what I meant," she said as he began gnawing her upper lip, the lower one suitably damaged.

Sesshoumaru frowned as Inuyasha turned around in his seat and whistled.

"Ajax, come here!"

"Leave him alone, he's fine with Aeron."

The dark haired Taisho turned to look at her, face incredulous. "I told you I don't trust him. You'll thank me if he turns out to be violent. I don't want you angry with me if he kills your dog."

Kagome paled and her eyes burst with green fire, "No one is going to kill my dog! Your possessive feelings and mistrust do not justify saying things like that-"

"I have never been possessive a day in my life-"

And right about then Kagome and Inuyasha descended into a rather heated argument in Japanese, the Bell and Vajra humming around the young woman's chest.

Sesshoumaru blinked at them, watching with mild fascination as their voices rose and their faces grew red. A small disturbance at his feet pulled his eyes away from the intense quarrel before him. Ajax waddled over and planted himself firmly on Sesshoumaru's feet, blinking up at his mistress and her frazzled companion. When the corgi's ears flattened against his head in response to Kagome's incrementally rising voice, Sesshoumaru decided it was time to intervene, lest a sword fight ensue.

"Stop," he demanded roughly, immediately silencing the bickering companions.

She stilled her tongue, emerald gaze immediately falling into his golden one.

Inuyasha huffed loudly and rose to his feet.

Kagome winced. "I'm sorry, Inuyasha. I'm tired and travel worn-"

"Yeah," he interrupted gruffly, shrugging, "me, too." And as apologies went that was as near one as could be expected. "I'm going to get some food. Want anything?" Kagome shook her head and Sesshoumaru ignored him. "I'll feed Ajax," Inuyasha finished awkwardly.

"Thanks," Kagome murmured, turning back to the window, her eyes reflecting the sea below.

"That," Sesshoumaru mused aloud, "is a miserable habit."

"What? Arguing with Inuyasha?" She bit her limp again, guilt weighing down her shoulders.

"No, argue with him as much as pleases you. _This_," he reached across the distance and pressed his fingertips to her lips, halting the slow ruin of her skin, "is what I was referring to. There may come a time, Kagome, when I am not around to heal all of your small aches and pains. You should look after yourself now so as not to be caught unawares."

Kagome inhaled sharply and a pained expression flooded her eyes. When he drew his hand away he was mildly surprised by the stark and sharp downward turn of her lips.

"Is something wrong?"

Her dark head shook slowly. "Don't say things like that."

He blinked at her, mind working to formulate a response. Which, admittedly, was somewhat difficult, as he was not quite sure what had upset her.

He scowled.

That damn accountant was ruining his entire day. He was so crippling that he was infiltrating Sesshoumaru's ever sharp and aware mind, clouding it with vicious and vile thoughts, dark distrust and misery.

But before him, Kagome remained silent and quiet in intensifying worry, and she, it seemed, was enough to bring him around again, because the moment after his confusion flared, a second after his contrary anger sparked, all other emotions ebbed and flowed away and he thought, rather distractedly, _ah_.

Ah, his mind echoed again, as if it had stumbled upon a vaguely interesting point.

The future.

Always unpredictable and ever changing.

Kagome was worried about that which she had no control over, that which had always been out of her reach.

Sesshoumaru was momentarily engrossed in revelation. And he was somewhat stupefied by his own inability to see something so clear and true about her.

She wanted control, hated the lack of it.

Just like him.

She was brave and smart and infuriating and naïve and somehow startlingly jaded. Everything about her always seemed to fall into place around him, every time he discovered a new part of her. But this, this epiphany was not new, she had admitted it before, had said as much, had admitted her fear and her hatred of an inability to have a say in life…

And there, hovering above the sea, returning to his homeland, Sesshoumaru felt like a he was catching up to her, was fumbling to find a way to fit in with her, to place himself around her appearing traits and features and flaws… and was realizing, rather quickly, with each word out of her mouth, that finding a place to fit was not so very hard.

Because it seemed they were all right, most of the time, just as they were. They startled one another, stepped on each others toes, occasionally had moments of great inspiration about the other, but really, they already knew how they worked with one another… and it had somehow, somewhere, at sometime in the course of everything, had fit together so neatly that Sesshoumaru, staring at Kagome, all the worried lines of her face, was becoming increasingly apprehensive himself.

_Ah_, his voice echoed again, longer, louder, more assured.

Sesshoumaru quietly despaired.

As he sat, finding her worry, as he sought for something easy and soothing to say, something to divert the heavy, grey conversation looming before them, he stumbled and stuttered to a stop.

He was worried about her.

Was worried because she was afraid. There was nothing to fear, not while he was around, at least. But the unpromising, uncompromising future held the void, the grey question that loomed over her as he watched her, searching through his own thoughts and emotions. It wound so high he feared he would choke on them, would go insane with something he could not name or place in past history, ideas and fleeting thoughts that were neither welcomed nor familiar.

History was not repeating itself, he realized with cold, shocking, numbing understanding, it was _not_ teaching him the same lesson.

History had very little to do with it and very much to do with he, the great Warlord of the West, and the wandering museum assistant sitting before him.

She was worried.

He was worried.

And for the very first time in a very long time, Sesshoumaru had nothing to anchor his thoughts to, had nothing to compare the numbing reality before him with.

And that thought was more frightening and overwhelming than learning the ways of humanity the first time, the slow removal of his ideas, the hard chips against his guarded thoughts.

He had learned a lesson the first time, had been taught by a slip of a being, a flickering little life. He had found the truth and importance of humanity, of at least one human.

And that lesson had been caught up in history and magic and fate.

But this, _this_ before him was not a lesson.

It was life.

And soaring over the sea, Sesshoumaru held his breath and waited for the words and the knowledge to come and tell him what he was doing, what was happening, and when they failed, again and again, he exhaled shakily and fell back out of his mind.

And one thought rang true, echoing clearly in his head.

This, all of it, went far past the call of duty, the strength of a promise, the nobility of honor.

He was past that line and into something else entirely.

Because she was important, for more reasons than the salvation of the world.

_Ah_, he thought, one last time, there he had it.

Kagome, still caught up in his gaze, shook her head and looked away, and her teeth flashed again, appeared over tired skin.

With great care, he reached once more, grasped her jaw in his hand and stilled her movements and finished his words so she would not despair.

"It is a bad habit and it is a good thing, I think, that I am here to fix the damage you wreck."

For a moment she looked as if she would not accept his pacifying words, his best attempt at comfort, but then her eyes softened with the lines on her face, and she let him heal her, brush away the evidence of uncertainty, and smiled.

And whatever words he was searching for did not seem to matter at that moment.

Because really, they were so inadequate to begin with.

And then they were descending through the clouds, touching down to the earth, were home, and were back to mystery and their hurried quest.

Above them, the sun shined and the clouds parted for its sons and daughter and the earth hummed their return, and the wind blew against and around the world, and whispered truth and hope to waiting ears, staring toward the ever-changing and unpredictable future.


	33. Over the Threshold

_So sorry for the delay- Migraines and moving back to college ate up my week. This semester promises to be very busy. I am not stopping the story- just be aware that I have no idea how regular updates will be. I will still try to get them out once a week- but- I can't promise they will be. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing and your continued interest!_

* * *

Chapter 33

**Over the threshold**

The sun was setting on another day when they returned to the house behind gates and nestled between trees, exhausted and drained, tense and irritable. Even though the sun stretched orange shadows across the land, bathing everything in fiery light, all still felt as if it were steeped in shadow- cold, distant, and empty.

Even the beauty of the surrounding lands did little if anything to dispel the rising worry in Kagome's head and heart. She wondered if that was how Sesshoumaru always felt, if he always worried about a timeline and a set of events that were out of his control.

It was no wonder he hated the idea of fate, if he felt even half of the agitation Kagome was experiencing.

Making her way through the large house she dropped her things inside the door to her room and then made her way to Aeron's room.

She knocked gently on the door, accidentally swinging it open with the force of her knock.

As the wood creaked open slowly, the fading light from the hallway swept into the darkened space to reveal the man, hunched over on the bed, staring at the carpet beneath his feet.

He did not look up as Kagome tiptoed inside, peering at him worriedly. He was so lost in his thoughts that he did not notice her until she gingerly rested her fingers on his shoulder, pulling him from reverie. He jerked under the touch and his head snapped up, his dark gaze meeting hers through the glare of his glasses.

"Are you alright?" She asked him quietly.

He gave a slight nod of the head, his long fingers wrapping themselves around the gold glinting around his wrists.

"I don't know what I'm doing," he admitted weakly, voice broken and ragged. When he looked up at her she saw fear drawn out in his dark eyes, illuminated in the sallow hue of his skin.

"It's alright," she murmured, hand patting his broad shoulder in comforting rhythm, " I don't know what I am doing either."

The man sighed dejectedly, his head dropping forward more, gaze fixated once more on the carpet.

"I can feel part of him, your Mage, buzzing around inside my head, swirling inside the jewelry. It's separate from me, just outside my conscious but somehow it seeps its way inside, finds a way to flash before my eyes, mingle with my thoughts and my ideas. Sometimes, for just a few vague moments, I forget who I am. It's like I've been detached from Aeron Michaels. I know he's real and he exists," he looked up again, shook his head, cast her a tired, worried smile, "but he's not me. And it isn't just the Mage inside my head. It isn't only his magic and his personality and thoughts that I am aware of. There are other presences folded in and hidden deep behind his, echoing faintly.

"It's confusing. Half the time I have no idea what is happening inside my head, inside these objects. But sometimes, I can catch glimpses of things, and they are so vividly clear that I might as well be staring straight at them. But they pass too quickly. I don't even know where to begin, I don't know how to sort through all of… all of this," he held up his arms and shook them for punctuation, the gold flashing in the dull room, arcing bright light over the walls. "I know I have to though. I can't tell you how, I just know that I am meant to, that I must do it."

He laughed weakly, ran a hand over his face, rubbed the shadow of stubble lining his strong jaw. "Kagome, I am not a brave man. I am not made for adventure and bloody battles. I can understand that I might be needed for some greater purpose, that's fine; I'll run with that. But if he-" he swallowed hard, frowning, " But if Sesshoumaru expects me to be some great Mage, a sorcerer who can battle demons and kill, he has the wrong man. I know he doesn't like me and that's acceptable. He is not my favorite person either. I can't see how we would ever see eye to eye, we are from completely different worlds, and I doubt I will be able to help him. And I know this is going to be difficult for you," he finished softly, eyes far away, hazy with comprehension.

Kagome's hand stilled on his shoulder as her fingers gripped his shirt tightly.

"There is a reason you are here," she replied quietly. "Out of all the people in the entire world, you were foreseen by the Mage and you are the one we were sent to collect. I don't like blindly following Fate, but that seems to be all we have ever done and as much as it pains me to say, it _has_ saved our lives on more than one occasion.

"And other than an ultimate goal of destroying the demon I have no real idea as to what we should be doing, but somehow in a very fragile and twisted way it all seems to work out… or at least lead us to the next mystery we should be unraveling. I have no reason to think otherwise with you. Surely an answer will appear, perhaps it won't be the one any of us want to see, but if you are meant to be here, if you were wrangled into this by magic beyond both our perception, maybe the all knowing will help us onwards a little more."

Aeron exhaled inaudibly, his shoulders slumping forward. "I hope so. I wish I could store as much faith in 'things simply falling into place' as you do."

Kagome laughed sharply, startling the man next to her. "I store very little, if any faith in Fate. It just seems that in its unpredictable way, it has a tendency to be completely predictable… as strange as that may sound. Every time I think we've hit a wall, or I have no idea what to do, something happens. Predictable unpredictability."

Aeron snorted and shook his head, lifting his face to meet her gaze. "I used to think that about you, you know."

"What? That I was predictably unpredictable?" A smile fought a war with the serious tone in her voice, her lips traveling upward of their own accord.

The accountant nodded. "I've known you for three years without really _knowing_ you. You always managed to surprise me in some way."

Kagome did smile then, a grin lighting up her face. "Ah. That's because you underestimate me."

Aeron rubbed the bridge of his nose, laughing sheepishly. "I know. I do sometimes."

The young woman removed her hand from his arm and slipped off the bed, making her way to the door.

"You and Sesshoumaru might get along quite well then," she said as she took a few backward steps to the open doorway.

Aeron raised an eyebrow, clearly disbelieving. "How is that?"

"He has a nasty habit of underestimating me as well. Perhaps the two of you can get together and remind each other that I am a perfectly capable person."

Aeron's smile descended into a soft grimace. "I don't think anyone would mistake you as incapable, Kagome. Unpredictability is a might bit different than inadequacy."

She just shrugged good-naturedly and curled her hand around the door handle, dragging the heavy door behind her.

"Get some rest, Aeron. I'll talk to you tomorrow."

With a gentle snap, the door closed, and she wandered away from his room, his words echoing softly in her head.

* * *

It was dark out, but Sesshoumaru refused to sleep. 

He had not dreamed in a very, very long time, and for unknown reasons, he believed that if he closed his eyes, if he slipped into the dream world in his head, he would revisit old thoughts and memories, would see things he had long since wished to forget.

He did not truly understand why this night should be different from any other, though his instincts told him it had a great deal to do with a dark, tall, spectacle wearing man who he personally considered as something akin to an enemy, sleeping in his home.

It did not bode well for his nerves at least and he decided to, instead of keeping one eye open as he slept, forgo the whole idea of it and wander about his estate in a right foul mood.

Sometimes, he had found, in his many years of solitary living, that a cantankerous disposition did a warlord good. _Sometimes_, on very rare occasions, foul temperaments did more for slaking frustration than a good bout with a sword.

At the moment he was proving his point correct to himself, he was wandering up the large stone steps to his dojo. He had decided the best place to stew was there, as it was very late and it was not likely that anyone else in the vicinity would think to bring their sour mood up to the red training house.

But of course, a nasty all knowing voice chimed in his head as the wind shifted and brought a familiar scent to him, and the sword at his hip hummed contentedly, lovingly, if there was anyone who could prove him wrong it was the person who had so unceremoniously beat him to his own favorite spot.

He paused at the top step and peered through the darkness, his eyes scanning for a small woman and her bright eyes.

Frowning, finding the floor empty, his golden gaze drifted upward and an amused smile twisted his lips.

With graceful ease he bent his knees and pushed his legs, soaring up through the air with careless ease. When his feet touched down on the rooftop, some ten feet from the ground, he caught sight of Kagome, perched on the apex of the roof, head tilted back, eyes fixed on the moon, hovering silent above the trees.

She did not move to look at him, gave no recognition of his presence what so ever. Only when he ascended the gentle slope of the roof and descended to sit next to her did she stir, the corner of her eyes occupied with her curious emerald gaze.

Amused, he stifled a soft laugh, impeding the words in his mouth.

"How _did_ you get up here?"

He saw Kagome smile, her teeth flashing white and bright into the dark.

"Now, before you become too impressed with my climbing abilities allow me to clarify that I do not and never will possess the agility to find my way up here by myself."

"Inuyasha?"

She ran a hand through her hair, pushing away the tendril that the breeze whipped over her sensitive skin and he caught the sight of a smirk dancing on her lips, "Inuyasha."

"And _why_ are you up here?"

She turned to face him, unblinking, frank. "I was lonely," she answered, eyes locking onto his, voice strong and steady, "and I wanted to remember mwhat we left on the Roof of the World."

For a split second Sesshoumaru's blood stilled, his heart stalled, and his slow, steady breath became utterly nonexistent.

In his head, he heard her voice, cool and hard and achingly unforgiving, _understanding_, repeating itself over and over again.

Sesshoumaru rarely bothered to pay attention to the subtext behind spoken word.

He did not take much store by empty threats, did not often listen when he was addressed, as there were rare few people who could say anything to him that was either of any interest or any importance.

But right then, as Kagome spoke, he could not help but wonder what _exactly_ she meant.

She could have alluded to any number of things, could have referred to a hundred more topics that he would never think of. She was a woman who saw the world in metaphors, a woman who willingly accepted Fate and all it entailed and he was a nonbeliever, was so set in his ways he sometimes wondered how he could step outside all he was and grasp even the tiniest fragment of her soul. And sitting there, not on the Roof of the World, sitting above his garden with the moon gleaming overhead, he felt vague, panicky confusion, riffling his normal complacent ability to dissect her words and figure out her intent.

It was not her words, exactly, that brought him up short and threatened to metaphorically throw him off the dojo roof- though they were mystifying enough- but it was the scathing disquiet of her tone, the harsh edge of steel, the vague fire in her eyes that startled him most, that made him ask, a moment after he collected himself,

"What do you mean?"

She blinked and looked back up at the night sky. "I don't ever remember feeling as peaceful as I did there. Well," she admitted, dark humor tingeing her voice, "I was peaceful when I wasn't being attacked and when the monastery wasn't falling down around our ears. I was peaceful when we watched the sky and the earth turned below us."

Sesshoumaru balanced on the edge of a dangerous cliff, hesitated as he rarely did, brows drawing together in dark, intense thought, and pushed forward, wondering why, why she so reminded him of himself, and why, _why_ he felt as if he were lost and floundering under her voice, the cold, hard, all knowing determination.

"Something is bothering you?" He asked carefully, approaching the precarious edge with strong, measured steps.

She sighed, and the abstract emotion left her with her breath and she was back to herself, losing all sharp edges, was falling back into the soft resolute young woman he had come to know, and he felt himself, as he watched the lines on her face fade, watched the gleam return to her eye, relax and let go of the heavy oppressive trepidation that had reigned so fully over him for such brief moments.

"Yes. I spoke with Aeron."

And his horribly repugnant mood returned.

"And he seemed so lost and tired and frightened and I was thinking… I understand why you hate the idea of something other telling you what to do, expecting you to follow a set path, to do what destiny wishes of you. It's not fair. Sure, we're probably going to save the world in the process but it is an awful lot to assume of a few soul individuals. What if we weren't so damned selfless? What if we didn't want any part of this? What if we don't? What if…." She trailed off, staring off into the dark forest with troubled eyes.

"I'm sorry. I was feeling angry." She rolled her eyes at him, "You know how I get when I feel out of control."

There was a brief image of her yelling at him in the dojo beneath their feet, the memory of her slight hand, swiping through the air to fend him off and unbidden, a smile curled his lips.

"Yes, I do remember."

She shifted, avoiding his eyes, boring through the darkness. "Sesshoumaru, I know that we don't have a lot of time and we're fumbling for leads and this is not at all what you planned. I know. But Aeron… he really doesn't know what he is doing. I need you to be patient with him, even when we may have little to no time. It won't help our cause if the two of you can't work together.

"And I'm not saying," she continued on hurriedly, "that you aren't patient and that you wouldn't be respectful. I just know he will try your patience because he thinks he can't do this."

Sesshoumaru frowned deeply, crimson flashing before his eyes. A caustic retort danced on his tongue, threatened to pry open his lips and still the air with its abrasive nature. But her words were anchoring, were enough to cut his thoughts short, were enough to tether his black temper.

He refused to speak, to make a promise, because to do so would be to admit a fault on his part, so he chose to glare into the darkness as she had moments before, the air shimmering with his loathing for the accountant inside his home.

"Oh, good," Kagome breathed lightly, "I'm glad we agree on that point. I think he might be close to figuring out how to use the power of the Mage. Maybe… if we are lucky." She stood then, unfolded herself with a slight jerk, her balance pitching back and forth before she found her center of gravity.

Without a word exchanged between them, Sesshoumaru stood and took her hand in his own, pulled her down the slick incline of the roof, halted at the edge of the tiled roof and lowered the woman down. Her feet dangled for a moment and she looked up at him, a grin breaking over her face and he let her go, watched her descend to the ground, landing soundly on her feet.

They stood, motionless, staring at one another until the deep rumble of his voice broke through the night.

"Sleep well."

She smiled once more and slipped away into the night, leaving Sesshoumaru wondering to the sky. Wondering when he had relinquished his authority to a museum assistant, wondering why he did not even care.

* * *

It took not one day but seven, before the accountant willingly left his bedroom and the magical stupor that had overtaken him. Every moment Kagome checked on him he seemed both near and distant. 

There were times when she wondered if he had even seen her at all, as he looked right through her, spoke to her as if he did not know her.

And there were times where she wondered if she knew _him_ at all.

Perhaps it was the vague hum of power that pervaded the air around him, weaved its way in and out of his soul, tinged his eyes haunting shades of color, rendered him stark and powerful and then frail and frightened but moments later, that sent her apprehension sliding and skating, whirling around in her mind. Or perhaps her anxiety was a product not of the strange sorcery overtaking and nestling Aeron within its midst, but the two warrior brothers who expressed their distaste for the man, their distrust for his character, and threatened, with both words and looks, to dispense of him forever.

Kagome was quite sure it was both, and depending on whom she was with at any given moment, had a great affect on what she was feeling.

But the one emotion that never failed to patter just below her heart, twine its way around her ribs and suck the air out of her, surprise her into inaction, was the horrible image of time, slipping neatly between her fingertips, and the sense, the altogether unearthly understanding that there was a dark and depraved shadow behind her, waiting to devour her soul.

It was frightening; it set her on edge and indistinct and fuzzy dreams turned into sharp, clear nightmares, ideas and images that plagued her weary mind. Several times during Aeron's hideaway days she awoke to meet the night, a pair of glistening gold eyes staring down at her, a hand grasped firmly on her shoulder, her wrist, insisting without insistence, that she wake and leave the dreams behind.

He would never say anything, but perhaps they both knew that he didn't need to. It was enough that he woke her and saved her from the intangible nightmares of all the things she could not fight. It was enough and it would do.

And she thanked him with as few words as he used to rouse her, and they never spoke of it in the sunlight, in the waking days where monsters inside the heart and head were forgotten to practice with swords.

But neither did they forget, and she caught him, sometimes, studying her intently, on the verge of words that would remain forever a mystery. And sometimes he did speak, but she was sure it was never quite what he wanted to say. And sometimes she understood him, knew quite easily what he meant, knew what his forthright statements were referring to. But other times she felt as if they played games, they danced around something greater and she couldn't help but worry that she had missed a lesson somewhere, a warning against words and thoughts that were grey and vague, but it didn't stop her from thinking, from answering his sometimes mystifying questions.

And sometimes she was the one who stopped him short, sometimes she could stun him into silence, though it was composed and calm and almost, very nearly controlled.

But mostly they waited, for seven long days, and she learned a little more about balance and watched time slip away.

And when her dark haired companion from the life she had left behind knocked on her metaphorical door, she was both relieved and disturbed.

"Kagome."

He had found her in the library, curled up in a large chair, burrowed between black letters and the lines separating sentences, trying to escape from the reality and the men in it.

She looked up, startled. She had neither seen nor felt his approach, and even standing before her in the dusty sunlight of the dim room she was not quite sure she could see all his definable lines. His dark eyes were laced with deep azure light and in the quiet of the place she could swear she heard the sound of his power, or that of the Mage's- whichever it was- humming on the air.

It seemed, in fact, that he was struggling, fighting to keep himself together, as if he were standing inside, holding all the pieces in place.

"Aeron?"

The hum on the air vibrated as her voice lifted, and the soundless tone shifted up, reverberating like the snap of a bowstring, singing through the space the man occupied.

"Take me to Sesshoumaru… and…. I need to be somewhere… open."

She stared at him, closed her book quietly, and stood, unable to take her eyes away from him.

There was something there within him that reminded Kagome of the Mage. It was untamed, powerful, threatening to overwhelm. It was not a reminder of the smile or the twinkle in the eye of the sorcerer. It was the recollection, the truth of who he was. Behind his kind eyes, his gentle smile, his puzzling words, he had been a great man, capable of enormous power and supreme sacrifice.

And she could see that, there before her, reflected in Aeron, a far cry from a great Mage, but churning with his power just the same.

"Right," she managed to breathe out, "right. Come with me."

She skirted him, danced around the spot where his power transformed the air, sent it shimmering and dancing with sorcery.

They did not speak again as she led him out of the library at a half run, the intensity of his words pushing her forward, fueling her fear, his gathering power slipping along the floor beneath her feet, mingling with the long shadow of her form, stretched out in the afternoon light.

"_Hurry_."

She dared not look behind her, did not want to see the magic of a dead man mingling with the last person she would have ever thought capable of wielding sorcery.

Up the stone steps she ran, almost blind, sight narrowed to a point, aware of the safe and all consuming quiet magic of Sesshoumaru, nestled within his soul, practicing in the dojo.

When she appeared at the top step the warlord had already stopped his practice, was hurrying towards her, had already felt the enormous straining power inside the man behind her.

She had no breath for words and even if she had, she could not have thought of any to say, could think of none to describe the indescribable. She moved aside and Aeron stepped up and into the dojo, the faint traces of midnight hanging around his edges.

He looked up, met Sesshoumaru's eyes, and there in his voice, the pleading note sounded, echoed in his face and in the depth and breadth of dark eyes. "I can't do this. I can't even control it. I can't…"

Against his shadow the day lengthened and dimmed. And like it had in the garden thousands of miles away, his power whirled into a frenzy, a self contained wind pulling and tugging at his frame, wiping his black hair off his brow, fluttering against the folds of his shirt, gliding between the gaps of his golden bracelets.

A hand touched her shoulder and pulled her back away from the bloom of power. She stumbled a little, her back knocking into a solid chest, but she could not tear her eyes away from Aeron, slowly being engulfed with his magic, a sorcery that was pushing outward, as if from his very soul.

The man looked up and met her eye.

"Sorry," he spoke, his words harsh across clenched teeth, "sorry," his voice echoed strangely, as if inside his tone there was nothing but power, nothing but the raw potency of enchantment.

Beside her, Inuyasha appeared from the thick of the forest, eyes wide, staring at the accountant with fierce amazement, and then, before he could say a word, the man disappeared behind a wall of blue, hazy mist, was overtaken by pent up sorcery, was washed away on sapphire waves.

"Is this supposed to happen?" She yelled over her shoulder to Sesshoumaru.

The hand on her shoulder tightened by fractional increments. "Doubtful."

To her right Inuyasha was holding up a forearm before his eyes, shielding them from the harsh the light, the column of power shooting up into the red roof of the dojo. Kagome glanced upward and gasped at the sight before her.

The blue light licked along the ceiling like flames of a fire, dancing erratically, swallowing the red pigments of the wood, bathing them in blue.

"We should move back," Inuyasha muttered, almost to himself, the blaze of blue fire cast back in his eyes.

Kagome felt the muscles in Sesshoumaru's arms and hands tense, readying to move her, could feel the steady intake of breath, knew she was well and safe with the two brothers, hoped and prayed for the same with Aeron, and then, just as they moved the light burst, the air rushed forward, and Kagome was wrapped up in a protective embrace and the world rolled once, twice, the sound of wood snapping and breaking around her ears, shards of the roof tiles whirling by and through the blue haze.

When she opened her eyes, when she became aware of her surroundings she found herself wrapped up into a tight ball, cradled close in the arms of her protector, kneeling in the midst of broken wood and azure smoke, rising high into the air.

Sesshoumaru's dojo was gone, shattered into a million tiny wood fragments, the roof torn asunder, littering the ground around them, smoldering gently in the aftermath of some great and powerful hiccup.

Kagome looked up into Sesshoumaru's face. His countenance was colored dark and shadowed, a sever line drawn over his furrowed brow. Slowly, as the sapphire wave of smoke rolled over him, he unfolded his tall build to his full height, arms still wrapped securely around the Protector of his sword.

She felt his magic ebb and flow, testing the area around him, his eyes searching the debris laden ground, piercing the colorful cloud rising above them. Kagome peered through the blue haze, searching for movement, a mixture of fear and amusement twisting her stomach into a knot.

Kagome knew what Sesshoumaru was thinking because the only thought echoing in her mind was both ironic and horribly, a part of their reality.

Seven days of waiting, only for their replacement Mage to blow the dojo apart.

"Inuyasha?"

Sesshoumaru's voice sounded out into the smoky clearing, dull and lifeless. There was a brief silence, and then, off somewhere near the edge of the tree line they heard the shifting of rubble and a derisive string of curse words followed by an impressive round of coughing.

Kagome twisted in Sesshoumaru's arms, searching for their lanky companion.

"Aeron?"

He did not respond. The only sound from the clearing came from Inuyasha, stumbling out from underneath a large broken part of roof tiles, still emitting curls of blue power. He stumbled over to them, dusting himself off, cursing wildly beneath his breath.

Kagome looked back up at Sesshoumaru.

"Is he alive?"

The warlord said nothing, his eyes centered on a spot further into the impermeable misty substance, tingeing the air.

And then, as if his only purpose in life was to further annoy the great warrior Sesshoumaru, Aeron Michaels called out through the deafening quiet, his voice warbling shakily, his hand appearing in the midst of a pile of shattered wooden beams.

"Here."

Kagome wiggled out of Sesshoumaru's grasp and weaved her way around the broken pieces of the dojo.

"_Shit_, Kagome, just leave him," Inuyasha snarled, shaking dust and debris from his shaggy hair.

Before her, the dark haired accountant rose from a particularly deep pile of wood and tiles, his glasses askew on his nose, a few cuts weeping bright blood down his face and neck.

He stood and stumbled out of the wreckage, turning around to take inventory of the damage he had dealt.

"Christ," he swore weakly and raised his hand to the back of his neck, rubbing his skin with long fingers.

"Are you alright?" She asked him, staring at the blue embers hidden in the shadows of the ruins.

His hands moved to his chest, felt along his arms, patted his legs, felt around his face, and ran through his hair. Bewildered, he turned to her, eyes wide.

"Yes, I think so. Are you?"

"I- sure."

"Did you have any idea what you were doing?" Inuyasha stalked toward them, hands balled into fists, eyes flaring with furious and righteous anger. "You could have killed Kagome!"

Aeron's amazement swiftly fell away, his ashen visage coloring crimson in his embarrassment and anger.

"No! I thought I had already made that abundantly clear. I have no idea in hell as to what I should be doing. Do you think I blow up gazebos everyday?"

Kagome sighed and ran a hand through her hair, pushing it back and away from his sweaty face. "It's a dojo," she muttered, though clearly, he was not listening.

"I told Kagome that she should not expect anything from me but still I agreed to do this, still I allowed myself to be pushed into this. I have spent the last seven days trying and failing to gain some semblance of knowledge over whatever it is your Mage left me. I tried and I failed!"

Inuyasha and Aeron were steadily walking toward one another, each emanating a murderous and dangerous air, fury drawn across their faces and in the hands clenched at their sides.

"Yes, thank you, you demonstrated your failure quite well. You obliterated the dojo!"

Kagome darted between them but before she could say a word, Sesshoumaru's voice cut through their rising voices, silencing them with a single word.

"Desist."

The men stalled and looked toward the aloof warrior, standing framed against the destroyed remnants of his training facility. He was adjusting the belt and scabbard around his waist, eyes focused on his hands, busy at the buckles and ties.

When he spoke, his voice carried with it the disdain and cold carelessness that Kagome had so come to associate with him and she almost laughed to hear the frigid, edge in him again.

Always cool, always calm, always the king of the land, always and forever.

"It is obvious that you cannot handle the power that has been given to you. The Mage may have believed you entirely capable of handling his power but I am not so quick to trust." He looked up and the expression in his eyes made both men take an involuntary step backward. But his attention was for no one but Aeron, centered in his anger, central to his problems, the roadblock to his future.

"I was willing to wait to see if you possessed the ability that the Mage did. A stretch, to be sure. Never again will a man such as he grace this earth. It was foolish and wasteful to assume you could possibly fill his shoes. But the sorcerer always was a fool, a fool who believed in the best parts of people.

"I am not the Mage and neither are you. This presents a problem. I do not possess the patience to deal with you. And you do not possess the magical prowess that I desire. Do you see the issue? There is no time to dally. Unfortunately and inconveniently for all of us, we are not operating on our own timetable. This means that for every moment you spend trying and failing to reign in power that is _not rightfully yours_ we lose an opportunity to end this war, this battle that we are in.

"So the Mage thinks you are the one to help us and I think the Mage is a fool. What then, do you suggest we do to remedy this situation? Perhaps I should kill you and find my own sorcerer. Surely one with little experience is better than none at all. Or perhaps I should send you back to your museum and you can wait for the demon to find you, torture you, and kill you. Or perhaps you could be a man. Perhaps you could, if it would not trouble you too much, defend yourself, learn for yourself, admit that this is not meant to be a vacation, and stop relying on Kagome to make this easy for you. "

He took a single step foreword, wood and ceramic tiles breaking under his weight, the snap of shifting debris echoing all around them.

"Perhaps you could lose your self loathing and cowardice. You do of course, realize that Kagome accepted her part in all of this without prodding, that she fights without question, that she has never once shied from her duty? She, a woman who had never once faced anything of this magnitude before?"

He took another step, movement methodical, face tumultuous, eyes dark and sharp.

"This," he waved his hand to the remains around them, "is nothing. You have yet to truly see power, to see evil, to see the devil and his minions. Can you stare into the pits of hell? Can you open the gates with your bare hands? Because I assure you, your predecessor did so. He fought and died and sent us to you. You. And this is the best you can do?"

He stopped before Aeron, staring down at him with open contempt, a sneer curling his lip, rippling along his coldly handsome face.

"I did not often know the Mage to be wrong. Not about such great things." His head cocked to the side and he looked the accountant up and down, just once, his eyes sweeping and narrowing. "But, perhaps, this was one of those instances." The warrior king leveled the man one last look before turning on his heel and striding away into the clearing mist, disappearing a moment later, his soft steps heading down the stone steps, his voice calling out in the distance.

"Be prepared to leave tomorrow. You have one last chance."

Kagome's mouth dropped open and she fought back the urge to call out to him, to demand to know what he meant. Instead, she stood where she was, staring after the pale man, the truth of his words ringing clearly, raw and sharp, like broken glass. She could not bring herself to look at Aeron, standing just behind her, his shadow cast at her feet.

Inuyasha stirred a moment later, glared up at the accountant, nodded once to Kagome and then brushed past, stuffing his hands in his pockets, his curses fading as he followed the steps of his brother down the stone path and into the mansion.

Kagome remained frozen; eyes glued to the spot the Taisho brothers had disappeared from. Around her, the wind blew gently, sweeping away the last fragments of Aeron's explosive sorcery. The leaves of the trees sighed gently, as if they too had been holding their breath, waiting for the entire episode to unfold and settle. Above, through the trees, the sun was nearly down, the last traces of bright day arching high into the sky, blue mingled with black, the night and the day warring for their place.

The young woman slapped her hands to her face and rubbed her skin viciously, wishing, wishing, _wishing_. Wising for many things, but mostly wishing for a little help, just enough to set them back along the path, set them straight, to make everything fall into place.

It felt, as she stood in the remains of the dojo, the place where Sesshoumaru trained and waited, the place that housed a warrior's soul, that nothing worse could have possibly happened. Everything felt distant and broken, cracked and fractured.

"Damn it," she hissed, crouching down to the ground, fingering a broken piece of the rooftop, her heart twisting painfully in her chest.

"I'm so sorry," Aeron murmured behind her, voice thick with heavy remorse.

Kagome looked at him over her shoulder. "Oh, shut up," she demanded wearily, "It's not your fault. No need to be a martyr."

The man looked around at the wreckage, shaking his dark head, his hands slipping into his pockets. "It is my fault Kagome. And Inuyasha was right."

"About what?"

"I could have killed you."

Kagome shrugged. "There are many things that can kill me. The three of you treating me like glass is not going to stop bad things from happening."

She dusted off her hands and stood, unable to do anything but survey the damage, to stare at the ruins. Beside her, Aeron kicked dolefully at a red beam, splintered and fractured, jutting out from a pile of shredded wood.

"You don't have any idea where we might be going do you?" He finally asked her, chancing a look at her face.

She turned away, eyes finding the fading sunset. "No," her words whispered out into the air and the man nodded absently.

"Shit, I really messed this all up. He might actually kill me."

Kagome snickered softly, shaking her head, amusement rising despite her worry and anxiety.

"You did blow up his dojo."

"Thank you for being so reassuring in my worst moment."

She patted him on the arm, a small smile curving her lips. "It's alright. I told you before. I have no idea what I am doing either. And I think we have the right man. You just need to figure out how to use the power that has been given to you." She paused and looked skyward again, catching the moon in her green eyes. When she spoke again her words were soft and measured, "Don't worry about Sesshoumaru. He wasn't too fond of me when we first met."

"I don't think that's ever been true," Aeron countered, voice just as quiet.

Kagome turned to look at him, but before she could ask him what he meant he was speaking again, softly and carefully, wistfully.

"There are 500 years of magic and knowledge stored up in these small tokens," he held his wrists up before her, the golden rings catching and refracting the light onto the broken, uneven ground."500 years or more. I'm not sure. Do you remember when I said that it feels like there is more than just the Mage in these rings? Like he is built upon other voices, but they are faint and far away, distant? There is a kindred spirit between each of those phantom beings… I think, maybe, that he was given his power much in the way that he gave his to me. I think power of this magnitude is granted. I don't believe he was born great and powerful. I think he was given the tools he needed to become the sorcerer you met. He had power when he was born, but not… not all this.

"There is so much magic in these objects, so much that it is overwhelming. I can't sort through it all. It's like a language that I only have the faintest grasp of. I can read parts of it, but it is so far and above my capabilities that all I end up doing is," he stalled and his eyes roved over the destruction he had created, "blowing up dojos. Sesshoumaru is right. Inuyasha is right. I am a coward and I certainly don't deserve this power, not if I can't even handle the barest of enchantments."

He sighed and moved through the broken fragments and his feet, plopping down on the top stone step, his hands moving her cradle his face, elbows on his knees. Kagome joined him a moment later, folding her skirt around her legs.

"I woke this morning and I felt more confident, like I had stumbled upon a page I could read, words in that language that I was pretty damn sure I could understand. I don't know what I was attempting; I was just going through the motions that weren't mine. When I lose myself in the magic, it feels like its been ingrained in me, like it's first nature. I panicked and lost what control, if I had any at all, on whatever it was I was doing. I knew something was going to happen, I couldn't reign it back in. I just ran for you."

He turned to look at her, hopeful and fearful.

"Do you think Sesshoumaru has some idea how to help me?"

Kagome smiled gently. "I would assume so. I can ask him tomorrow before we leave, what he has in mind. Don't worry; we'll get through it. I have faith in you. The Mage picked a good man to give his powers to."

They sat, silent, staring at the night sky, neither wishing to dwell on the impossible task set before the man. 500 years of magic and he had barely scraped the surface. Had barely scraped it and he was needed to free a wind spirit whose own great power was tied and bound to a land by a tainted evil being, a tainted evil being that Aeron would need to fight, perhaps defeat, would need to outwit and outsmart and outmagic, all so they could carry on, on and on, on until it ended, on until they ended.

Finally, when she could stand her thoughts no more, she rose slowly and cast a final, fleeting glance back at the rubble pile. "If we are heading off somewhere new you should rest. If using your magic is anything like the things I have experienced you are going to be exhausted."

Aeron stood next to her, like a shadow of the night, tall and dark.

"I'll talk to Sesshoumaru as soon as it's safe to approach him."

Next to her, the man smiled and readjusted his glasses in an embarrassed, weary sort of way.

"Thank you."

Together they walked down the steps and through the elaborate garden and when they reached the inner corridors of the mansion they bade one another goodnight and went their separate ways.

When Kagome woke from a dreamless sleep, both Aeron and Sesshoumaru were gone.

* * *

He dreamed of gateways and golden paths, of tired hands and magical objects, hidden from his eyes. 

He saw familiar faces drifting in and out of the gloom, stood by impassively as they faded and were swept away.

He stood on the edge of the sea and watched the morning roll in.

He walked down a busy city street in the middle of the night, the hum of fluorescent lights buzzing above the murmur of a million people.

He pushed open the iron gate, wrapped with greenery, fingers tangled in ivy, stepped down an uneven stone path and disappeared into white.

And all the while he dreamt, all the while he saw things that made no sense, that both comforted and confused him, he carried on, walked forward, remained a stone, refused to let go, to shy away from all that he did not understand.

And when he woke to the demanding voice above him, when he should have been apprehensive and frightened and fearful and should have refused the demands that he wake and dress and ready himself, he did nothing but obey, because for the first time in his entire life he felt as if he were moving forward. He felt as if the next step was the right one, as if he did this _one thing_… everything would make sense.

So he rose and greeted the sunset and disappeared from the mansion without a backward glance.

* * *

Tokyo was like nothing he had ever seen. It was densely populated, overwhelming. 

It was lucky, he thought, that their business was not out on the streets, because he did not think he could handle the hustle and bustle, the waves of people, the overwhelming urge he had to run for empty space.

The car rolled to an easy stop.

His eyes immediately flew to the tinted windows. But he saw nothing outside on the sidewalks that told him what he was doing, sitting in a limo in the middle of Tokyo.

In front of him, in the shifting shadows inside the darkened car, the gleam of gold caught his eye. He removed his gaze from the buildings next to him and met Sesshoumaru's penetrating stare.

"What am I doing here?"

The warrior blinked and looked away, eyes narrowing on something in the distance.

"You will stay here. You will not leave this place. You will follow all the instructions given to you. And when we come back you will either have grasped the power in your hands or you will have blown apart another building."

Aeron sat up straight, sending a surreptitious flick of the eyes back to the nondescript building fronts.

"Stay where? Follow whose directions? You're leaving me here?"

Sesshoumaru did not respond, rather he leaned for the door and slid out into the sunshine, ignoring the accountant completely.

After a silent, despairing moment, Aeron followed.

He blinked against the harsh light, his eyes narrowing as he turned his face away from the impossibly bright sunshine.

"There."

Aeron shielded his face with a hand and looked toward Sesshoumaru, standing on the cracked and broken sidewalk of a lonely street, arm extended, finger pointing to a break between the building fronts.

For a moment, Aeron remained frozen, unsure and unwilling to know what he was to do. He turned in a half circle, eyes cast about the street.

They had abandoned the busier parts of the city for the district they now stood in. It was older, careworn. Some of the shops were boarded up, and while there was no end to the buildings, the houses, the streets, the fences, there was an almost total absence of people.

He looked back at the warlord, impatience manifesting on his pale face.

"That alley?" Aeron asked tentatively, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes. Walk down that alley. There will be a gate. Enter through there."

And then he turned and stepped back toward the car.

Aeron turned after him, confused but steady.

"You seem to trust that I will follow your vague directions even when you have offered no information to me. What makes you think I will do anything you want? I have made it very obvious that I do not want to be here, that you most likely have the wrong man for this quest. Why am I here Sesshoumaru?"

Sesshoumaru paused, his hand hovering over the door handle. When he faced the other man, his face was set in stone, but his eyes betrayed his displeasure and contempt.

"Why do you think you are here? Do you honestly believe that you can master the Mage's magic on your own? No. I think not. You proved quite soundly that you are incapable. You are here as a last resort. You may not believe you are the right man but the Mage did. If you cannot learn here then I have no use for you. And you will be free to go back to your life and we will find other means to our end."

"How long will I stay?"

"As long as necessary, though I believe that will be a quite short stay. The wood spirit that I need your magic to free is failing and each moment that you waste is a moment she could be free, could be free and helping in our quest, answering my questions."

He opened the door, began to step inside, but halted just before he ducked into the shadowy interior, the cool air of the vehicle.

"I believe you will stay, I believe you will do what I ask because while I may not trust you and while I may think you incompetent, Kagome does not. She has great faith in you."

Aeron inhaled sharply at the sound of her name, felt duty and unspoken promises and her absolute and infallible trust in him rise and crest over all his worries, washing them away, leaving him nothing but a selfish man, standing on a lonely street.

"You will not stay for me," Sesshoumaru murmured so quietly he may have been speaking to himself, "but you will stay for her."

And without another word he slipped into the car and left Aeron standing alone on the sidewalk, a dark blotch on a perfectly sunny day.

* * *

Kagome found Inuyasha at the indoor dojo. 

When he turned, in the midst of a smooth thrust of the sword, he faltered, his feet slipped under him and he swayed awkwardly, the sword tip falling toward the floor, brushing against the elaborate carpet beneath his feet.

They stared at each other, a strained silence pulled taut between them.

"Careful, Inuyasha, you look guilty. You wouldn't happen to know where Sesshoumaru and Aeron went off to would you?"

Inuyasha averted his eyes to his sword. He spent the next few minutes painstakingly sheathing it and reattaching it to the place at his hip. He could still feel her gaze on him, boring green holes through his head, pinning him to the spot with their intensity.

When he gathered the nerve to meet her eye he saw that she had not moved, stood stock still, arms crossed, face impassive, but underneath her calm he could sense, could almost see the tumultuous wave of warning, crashing back and forth, her energy surging, buzzing around her with fierce intensity.

He sighed and rubbed his hands over his face, anything to hide himself from her scrutiny.

"Yes, I know."

"Where? Where have they gone?"

He hesitated, pulled his fingers away from his face and stared, guilty, at the floor. "Away."

"Away _where_?"

He cringed at the harsh, abrasive grate of her words, winced and shied away, wondered when she had become so like his brother.

"Somewhere where someone could help him."

"Help who? Aeron?"

He chanced a glance up, only to see her step forward into the room, the dangerous calm still rolling of her, pervading the air and raising the fine hairs on his neck and the backs of his arms.

He nodded, "Yes."

She stepped closer to him and her arms fell to her sides. She peered up at him, her face falling from stone and into an expression of soft, unbelievable surprise.

"Where exactly is he?"

"Tokyo."

Kagome's dark brow furrowed and she shook her head in astonished disbelief.

"But, who could possibly help him?"

* * *

Aeron watched the black car roll away, stood fixed in place until it was gone, and he was alone in the middle of a country. Alone in the middle of an abandoned district. Alone on a sidewalk. 

Alone in the oblivion of gifted and freely given power, magic he could not use, sorcery he could not understand.

Aeron squeezed his eyes shut, blocked out the vague and distant sounds of the city and concentrated hard on the pavement beneath his feet, hoping that in doing so, he could rend the stone in two and slip beneath the surface of the earth, fall asleep forever, and never again worry about something as great as all he had been thrust into.

He willed himself to breathe, to calm and find the quiet determination he had woke with, the desire to do that which he might be meant and destined for, willed himself to open his dark eyes and face the alley that would take him somewhere new, might bring greater clarity, might unravel a mystery that threaten to envelope him and lose him in its midst.

But Sesshoumaru was right and Aeron hated him for it. Hated him and thanked him, silently, in the quiet, secretive corners, dusty, braver parts of himself, lost and unknown to the rest of him.

And standing in the midst of the lost and forgotten street, looking into the part of him that he had forgotten about had cast aside because of fear and the unknown, Aeron found the silly and elusive courage to do the right thing, do what he wanted, to do what he needed, to take action and to take a single step, and then another, and another, and another, until he was turning down the alleyway, his dark eyes following the cracks in the pavement, gaze sweeping upward to watch the dark shadows of the buildings contrasted against the bright light of the sun, drifting down into the mellow alleyway.

He felt as if he walked forever, as if he had spent a lifetime of stepping over cracks and crushing weeds that rose between broken slabs of ground, of tracing the seeping day with his veiled and hooded eyes, and finally, when he reached the end of the corridor, when he stood, facing an iron fence, built into the wall, when he stared down the ivy, obscuring his view of the future and what stood but feet in front of him, Aeron stopped and stared, and waited for his courage to fail.

His hand hovered, fingertips brushing tantalizing over the cool metal of the gateway, the gold gleam of a round knob, so much like the rings around his wrists.

And then before he could make his decision, the gate swung open and the sunlight his eyes, and the dark shape of the future stood before him and welcomed him in.

"Come," It said, "follow me."

And he stepped inside the threshold and followed Fate to where it led.

* * *

"Who could help him, Inuyasha?" 

Inuyasha looked up from the floor and down into Kagome's face, his words creeping up and out without his permission, slipping into the air. His voice dropped like a pin to the floor, echoing soft and vacant, of mystery and riddles, and enigmas, and fate and all the things she could see but never grasp.

"The Mage's daughter."


	34. Of Summer

_To say I'm greatly disappointed in the amount of reviews would be an understatement. Thank you to those of you who do review. It is greatly appreciated. _

* * *

**Chapter 34 **  
**Of Summer**

It was dark and the shadows reigned supreme.

Light trickled down, but was faint and fleeting, bled out and faded away and was swallowed by the encompassing onyx, so deep and true that night might have curled up and nestled in the tiny space, hidden from the world.

Her eyes gleamed an unnatural hue, wept crimson into the dark. She lay curled up on a cold floor, balled into herself.

She was called traitor, was treated as such.

In all her years she had never believed it to come to this, lying broken on the ground.

She could hear his voice, still tumbling around inside her head, asking her the one question she could not answer.

_'Why did you live?'_

She didn't know. She didn't _want_ to know. She didn't care.

When she awoke on the mountain, her first thought had been of him, had hovered over what she could do to serve him, to make his desires come to life. She had killed for him, had made her life into nothing but underhanded deeds and black broken promises.

And for all she did, for the death she had suffered, the pain of rebirth, she lay, accused of betrayal, forgotten and broken, alone, shattered, left to the nightmares that her master created.

And the thoughts that whirled around in her head, just after those that screamed the injustice and the erroneous mistakes of his accusations, underneath her bitter, scathing hatred, her wounded soul, thoughts of treachery sang, bright and clear, fueled by the demon's own threats and malice.

Had he not accused her so wrongfully, had he not treated her like the dirt upon which he walked, had he trusted her and all that she had put into her miserable, wretched life, never, never, would she have dwelled upon the flashes of possible future, the revenge, surging into her mind.

But Kagura was an imperfect being.

She was beautifully made and selfishly wrought. She had existed for him and had followed his whims and his wishes, had thrown herself, all of her soul, into what he desired, had twisted her essence, had used the steel of her sword, had manipulated the physical world, and it all came down, all of it, tumbling, falling, cracking, breaking, to a dilapidated, sorrowful end.

Even as carefully carved beings were made to serve a purpose, to exist for their master, to follow his orders and obey his commands, even then, when his creations were so tied to him, were tethered and bound, were expected to come when called, were relied upon, were necessary- they were imperfect.

And never, _never_, had Onigumo, the great demon lord who razed cities to the ground, who lived on blood and fear, who fought the greatest war king of the east, who defeated death itself, who walked the underworld and returned with his power, never had he met one of his creations, one of his extensions, who had ever contemplated the unthinkable, who had ever thought to undermine him, to usurp him, to drag him down and pull him back into the void.

And because Kagura had not betrayed, because she had been betrayed, because she lay with his magic still coursing through her veins, dragging agony behind it, his distrust ice and steel in her head, her every thought, with each heartbeat, became stronger, clearer, became a vision of what would be, laid out before her eyes.

She would become what he made her, would become the betrayer, would show him true duplicity. She would unravel him the only way she could, would end him with the simplest of acts, would take what he had shown her, would give him up and away and gladly watch him die.

She was single minded. He had made her so.

And as she lay in the depth of the dark, she plotted and planned and twisted and lied until his voice was gone and she was the only one left, murder in her eyes, revenge in her heart. And even as she saw her own death, saw what it would take to exact vengeance, she did not falter, did not fade.

Because hell had no fury like a woman scorned.

* * *

Inuyasha was feeling like a horrible, guilty bastard.

Which made perfect sense, as he was a horrible, guilty bastard.

The moment the words left his mouth he wished he could have burrowed into the enormous, ornate rug beneath his feet, wished he was more eloquent, wished he was like Sesshoumaru and could deflect curiosity. Though, admittedly, Kagome's naturally inquisitive nature had paled in comparison to her belief- one, he honestly thought was well earned- that she had a right to know _everything_.

There had been no polite inquiry.

She had demanded to know who and he had told her.

And now he felt like a horrible, guilty, bastard.

The Mage's daughter.

Three little words and everything changed again.

And Kagome's face had fallen out of rigid, unrelenting determination and melted into blank shock. And then she nodded once and left the room.

Perhaps his guilt, written plainly on his face, delineated thoroughly in his eyes, had freed him from involvement, or the supposition of. Perhaps she knew, all too well, that it was Sesshoumaru who knew everything, and that he, Inuyasha, was just tagging along, following orders, trying to keep up.

But whatever the case may have been, he still felt like a heartless cretin.

He left her alone, sat in the middle of one of the empty, sprawling rooms, designed for guests who would never set foot inside the manor, and stewed in his own emotional guilt, weighed the potential options in his hands, threw Ajax's tennis ball for him, and then, when he felt like he might wither away, felt like he had to do something to make everything a little easier, that he should at least distract her from the newest turn of events, he stood and tracked her down, all the way to the library.

She spent her spare time reading, when she wasn't training, wasn't speaking with Sesshoumaru, wasn't spoiling her horrible little dog. Curled up in a big chair, lost in a different world, but always the worry remained, showed in her face, pinched her dark eyebrows together, tugged at the corners of her mouth.

"Hey," he started, hoping she wouldn't close her book and lob it at him.

She looked up at him over the yellowing pages. "Hi." Those dark eyebrows furrowed further. "Are you alright? You look grey."

He shrugged absently and sidled closer. "I'm fine." From underneath his messy locks of ebony hair he studied her, wondered why she wasn't furious with him. "Are _you_ alright?"

She waved her hand and closed her book. "Fine."

Another step and he grew in his confidence, knew that with each passing second it was less and less likely that she might attempt to hurt him.

"I'm sorry. Sesshoumaru-"

"Will tell me everything when he returns. I know. I assume he has a very good reason to not speak with me before. Or maybe he just ran out of time? It's all right."

He stared at her.

Epiphany shot him straight in the head and soared down through his aching chest.

Suddenly, inexplicably, he realized that the woman before him was not only entirely different from the girl he had accosted in the kitchen, one late night so long ago, but had, in the time he had known her, changed absolutely everything about the world around him.

It was ironic, he thought, that he should find a kindred spirit in a young woman, so far removed from his birthright. It was bewildering that she had the ability to stare him down and open him up and befriend him so smoothly that he did not even notice. It was awe inspiring that she knew his history, knew his name, knew, or guessed, his one great and true mistake, and still, there she sat, looking him in the eye, unafraid, unassuming, willing and ready to forge on.

And then he thought of his brother, his forbearing, resigned kin, and all the ways she twisted around him, without even meaning to, and he grinned, overtaken by sudden impulse.

He held out his hand, extended it across the dusty space between them.

"Come with me."

She eyed his the proffered hand with skeptical interest.

"Why?" She asked slowly, a small smile appearing at the hidden lilt of mischievous defiance, floating in his words.

"I want to show you something."

She stood, balanced the book on the edge of the armchair and took his hand.

"Alright."

He dragged her out of the library and through the halls, out onto the grounds and through the trees and up the paths to stop in the middle of a clearing, dotted with bamboo shoots, overlaid with the leaves of green trees.

"Ok," Inuyasha said, dropping her hand.

Kagome's eyes slid around the clearing once and then found his face again.

"…Ok? Is there something in particular you wanted to show me?"

He drew himself upright, a grin slowly working its way onto his face, his heart hammering with anticipation.

"We," he paused for dramatic effect, felling buoyant and jubilant, nearly bouncing on his toes with anticipation, "are going for a run."

A weak little laugh pushed itself out from her lips and she cast a skeptical look at her lower half, the skirt flowing around her knees, the sandaled footwear. "I'm not dressed for a run and even if I was I would have to politely decline. I hate running. I only do it when my life is in danger. Which," she said, frowning as she thought, "has been happening quite a lot lately."

Inuyasha shrugged, unbothered. "Well, it's lucky then that I don't expect you to do any of the work." Kagome blinked at him and he turned on the spot, bending a little at the knees. "Climb on."

"Why?"

An exasperated exhalation of air sounded out clearly through the glade. He straightened and turned to face her, losing some of his cocky, carefree attitude, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets.

"I used to run when I was younger, when I lived in open space. It helped me forget… _things_. I haven't had the opportunity to do it since I lived in Tokyo." He laughed a little and shook his head, "That's not true. When things were bad," his voice dropped, was punctuated with memory, soft and quiet, lost in the recent past, "I would run on the rooftops at night. But I couldn't do it often. It wasn't safe. Out here I can." He gestured to the lands surrounding them and Kagome followed the curve of his hand, glancing through the trees, green eyes scrutinizing the rising and falling hills. "I just thought maybe you'd like to forget some things, too. Books may work for a little while, but when you can't stop your thoughts then what do you do?"

"Face them," she murmured quietly, sadly.

He extended his hand to her once more, and she stared at his fingers, stretched out to her, thinking, deliberating.

"You can postpone them for a little longer."

And apparently she agreed, because her hand slipped into his a moment later and they were off and running through the trees, soaring over the ground.

* * *

It was raining again.

But unlike the early spring showers, these held the promises of warmth and the echo of summer. The clouds overhead had long since lost their dark remnants of winter, and were nothing more than clouds, passing through the valleys, leaving water in their wake.

Even then, there was a sadness to them, a sorrow that he could not describe and hated to think about.

But he was alone and had little else to muse over, and so he let his head fall back against the cushion of the car seat, his bright eyes open and staring out through the rain covered window above his head, troubled, vacant, weary, and ragged.

The miles sped by but they followed the rain.

There was no sun for him on this day.

It would have been ill suited anyway, he thought dismally.

He was never hopeful because he had never had much reason to hope, but with the absolute lack of good news, Sesshoumaru was feeling decidedly morose.

His back was to a wall and he had no control, could do nothing to change his problems, to fix the future. And in the long line of things that had gone wrong, in the midst of all the surprises he had been given, he hated to think that his last alternative was an accountant, hated to think that if the lanky mathematician failed, he would be, as far as he knew, doomed.

Because it was all quite clear to him now, that he was to follow the whims of another, was meant to do certain things at certain times, and to fail… to fail would be to end it all. And it was all so tedious, so precarious, so unsteady that at any moment in time all could go awry.

He raised a hand and rubbed his eyes, grimaced, and wished he could shut down his mind and think of something pleasant; something that did not involve all the ways his very world could end.

His mind wandered for a moment, poking and prodding at various ideas and images, thoughts and memories, all of which made him cringe and further drag down the corner of his frowning mouth, until, through the fog of thought, he fell on one topic that did not bother him very much at all, eased his mind and unknotted the tension building up inside of him, unraveled it and unwound it until he was vaguely abashed to find himself so close to contentment.

Because only one thing, one person could make Sesshoumaru into something he was not, or break him down into everything he might have been, had he not lived for so long and been made into a warrior king. And sitting in the back of his moving car, racing back to his hidden house, he let the time slip by as he dwelled on the one and only, Kagome Higurashi.

Because it seemed, even when he did not wish to acknowledge how easily she slipped into his mind, even when he did not want her or anything remotely involving her to surface with his conscious thoughts, she did so anyway, and he was, many times, remiss to stop those wayward, tumbling ideas.

Sometimes, he stopped to question why, peered into the possible scenarios and reasons why he would let her force her way inside his head, but that always left him feeling very, very out of control because he never remembered giving himself permission to think about her so effortlessly.

But as many times as he made himself panic with the ease of which he called her face up before his mind, thought about the curve of her lips curved as she smiled, remembered the determination on her face when she faced down her enemies, recollected the way her callused hands felt in his own, pictured her, caught in time, falling from the zenith of the monastery, or traced the memory of the moonlight on her face, perched above the world and wrapped inside snow kissed mountains, all those things brought him something he could not describe, something that should have driven his panic deeper, spiraled it to new heights. But many times, after each of those memories had danced gently through his mind, he could not quite bring himself to care because it was the same reason that made him panic that brought him a serene and peaceful state of mind.

For both his panic and his calm were rooted in the one, real, truth about her.

She was important.

And anymore, it was not because of Fate, because of who she was or what she was or even what she would do.

Certainly all those things were of momentous import, but through the drag of time and quest he had come not to care very much about her life in those terms. Because she had become crucial in all ways he dared not give name to, did not even know if he could.

And because both his alarm and tranquility were derived from the importance of her, the significance of _her_ to _him_, not her to the world, not her to the demon, of _Kagome_ to _Sesshoumaru_, he could do nothing but watch it unravel. And he let everything, all the nameless things between them, rise and fall, and ebb and flow, and fill up and spill out, because so like the sea they were, two shores, two worlds apart, an ocean in between, that he could think of nothing other to do, than close his eyes and seep himself in good memories, in the kind of recollections he had never before possessed.

And before he knew it he was home.

* * *

The closest thing she had come to the sensation of flying had been the quick, adrenaline filled minutes following her escape from the Wood Spirit's enchanted hut. On the back of the great warlord she had watched the earth fly beneath his feet, had felt the wind around her, had flown above the waving grasses.

But it had not been enjoyable.

They had fled from an enemy, had only just made it to safety and then it was all over.

He had carried her up a mountain, but that time, too, had been fueled by fear and she did not have the presence of mind to fully appreciate the breadth and scale of the mountain they had ascended, the clouds they had glided through.

And Sesshoumaru had carried her down a mountain, and the descent had been quick and fast but overshadowed by the Mage's death. There had been no joy in the acts, though, considering the life she now led, it shouldn't have been such a disappointing surprise that many things fell short of expectations.

But this!

Oh, this was incredible. _This_ was what it felt like to be carefree and to let go and forget and live somewhere else for just a short little while.

The air rushed passed them, fluttered around her skirt and her knees tucked into Inuyasha's hands. Trees were a blur, the grass beneath their feet blended in and out of leaf filled piles, rocky hillsides, and fragmented earth,

"You're sure it's safe to be this far from the fences?" She called over his shoulder, grinning foolishly, too enthralled to really care.

The man laughed and sprang up into the trees, darting from branch to branch before descending back to the earth and weaving around the natural obstructions to his path.

"Sesshoumaru has been extending his sorcery past the fences little by little. We're still within his protective spells. I wouldn't go past them. Don't worry!"

So she didn't and he kept running.

* * *

Sesshoumaru stepped out of the rain and into the foyer of his large, empty estate, frowning in distaste as water ran down his hair and into his eyes. Immediately upon setting foot within his home, he froze.

There was something wrong with the air, a feeling, a vibration, tingling along his spine.

It was not wretched or evil; it was not tainted or malignant. He waited for a moment, breathed in carefully, tasted the day on his tongue, and felt the inexplicable emotion of sorrow, threading through the early summer day.

His frown deepened. Slowly, he walked through his halls, allowing his aura and senses to fan out, carefully searching for Inuyasha and Kagome.

It was not difficult to find his brother. Inuyasha found him not five minutes after he entered the house.

His sibling's face was grey and tired and he wore worry like a cloak. It surrounded him and weighed his shoulders down. But there was no air of urgency around him and he seemed well and whole.

The brothers stopped in front of one another and Sesshoumaru watched his younger sibling carefully, waiting for him to speak.

"I think you should talk to Kagome." He looked up from the patch of floor he had been staring at and met Sesshoumaru's guarded eyes. "She's been… different, the past three or so days you've been gone."

Sesshoumaru nodded once, moved past his kin. Of course it was all just a large, twisted misunderstanding and of course, once he told her what she wanted to know it would be fine. She was _always_ fine after her curiosity was satiated.

Except, there was something about the way Inuyasha spoke, the quiet, reverent cadence of his words, the pervading sadness around the manor that set him on an anxious edge and quickened the beat of his heart. He turned and walked away, forced himself to walk steadily, and Inuyasha was left standing in the open hall, staring at the retreating back of his older brother.

Sesshoumaru did not have to search for her, she was not hiding from him, not burrowing away in the library, or barricaded off somewhere on the rainy grounds. She was, instead, curled up in an armchair, facing one of the large windows in her room, watching the sky rain.

Her door was partially open, and from the hall he could make her out, washed in grey light. A book lay discarded at her feet and Ajax lay with his head on it, crumpling the page she might have been reading.

He stood for time uncounted, observing her through the narrow gap in the doorway, studying her face.

Yes, something was different.

And he did not like it one bit.

She shifted and turned to face the doorway, a slow, tired smile spreading and warming the weary lines of her countenance.

"Are you going to stare at me all day or are you going to come in and tell me what is going on?"

To say he was surprised by her lack of anger would have been, perhaps, one of the greatest understatements he himself had ever heard. He reached out and opened the door and stepped inside, eyes still rooted on her face. With great caution and discretion, he crossed the large room to stand at the side of her chair.

He stared down at her, words formulating quickly, but before he could speak, she was diverting him, the way she did best, the way she knew how, the way she did when she did not want him to get inside and find out her secrets.

"You can sit if you like."

She was telling him what to do again.

How loathsome.

He glanced at an identical chair next to hers. For a moment he considered refusing and demanding to know just what in the hell was wrong with her so he could fix whatever had her in such a horrendously dismal mood, but then decided against and sat. He owed her an explanation at least, before he started demanding things from her.

They regarded each other silently. Kagome waited patiently, while Sesshoumaru narrowed his bright gaze, unsure and unsteady.

"Inuyasha told you I went to Tokyo?" She nodded once, and his gaze drifted down to her hand, drawing faint patterns on the arm of her chair. "The accountant," he started, looking back up to her face, "is well." A wry smile twisted his lips and was echoed on hers. "I did not harm him, if you were worrying after him."

She laughed softly. "No, I wasn't worried for him. You may not like him but I know you wouldn't hurt him. He's safest with you even if he doesn't know that yet."

Sesshoumaru was far too proud to agree with her statement so he raised an eyebrow at her, his face clearly displaying his displeasure and dislike for the lanky man. Her smile widened in response and silence fell between them again.

Sesshoumaru gazed out the large window, watching as trails of rain sped down the clear, glass panel, distorting the view of the land, swirling the colors and blotching the day together, like an unfinished painting, like an imperfect story.

"I took him to the Mage's daughter," he murmured thoughtfully, almost to himself. "I do not know if she will be able to help him. But if she can she will be the only one capable of assisting."

He sighed, long and low, and his own exhausted worries coupled with the dark grey desolation poorly hidden behind Kagome's smiling face threatened to overwhelm him. He leaned back in the chair and continued to stare out the window, lost in his own world.

"Many years ago, I caught wind that the Mage had died, that he was killed by a very powerful warrior. I had lost track of him after we killed the demon. We each went our separate ways and hoped that we would never see one another again. For surely if we did, it would mean the rebirth of our greatest nemesis. I lived on and thought very little of how greatly his supposed death would later affect me."

In his mind, he saw himself, very much as he was that very day, but he knew the differences well, and none of them could be seen, could be outwardly discerned. He wavered, his eyes flickering to the woman beside him, knowing all too well that many of those imperceptible changes had everything to do with her.

He probably should have been furious with her, possessing such abilities that would not only change a man but a warlord, a named demon, a being so far and different from her that by all rights there should have been nothing of common ground between them. He should have been furious, but instead, where once he would have been righteously angry and indignant, he felt nothing but bemusement and wonder.

Her emerald eyes swept up from her hand, caught him looking at her, and he tore himself away again, looked out into the rain.

"The Mage, after he assisted in the defeat of the demon, went off into the world. He remained a sorcerer as always. He traveled and unearthed the secrets of his sorcery, wielded his magic and hid from those who meant him harm. Inuyasha has told you of those mortal men and women, the sorcerers, the mages, the necromancers who hunted him, did he not?"

"Yes."

"They searched for the Mage as well, because he was great and powerful and knew more about magic than they ever would. They chased him and fought him and urged him to join in their endeavor. He would not. He refused. They tried to kill him then and almost succeeded. They would have ended his existence and stolen his power if it had not been for one of their own. A huntress, a powerful warrior mage.

"She helped him escape because in him, in the Mage, she saw truth. I do not know why she joined with the hunters, why she believed in their cause, but in the end she fled from it, redeemed herself by saving the Mage. Together they ran and hid away.

"The hunters turned their focus on Inuyasha when they lost the Mage. They had hunted him before but never in such force. And as Inuyasha told you they sought him. I was their main objective, but they believed Inuyasha to be weak and so they attempted to kill him first, or use him as bait for his older, stronger brother. Together we fought them and nearly ended their entire clan.

"There were those who escaped, those who were both smart enough and cowardly enough to hide from us, those who refused to face us, those who ran when we appeared. Most of their ranks, the highest and most powerful were killed."

He looked back at Kagome, who was staring out the window, eyes fixed on the past.

Even with the unnamed and untimely emotions swirling around her in deep, hidden places, she was capable of drawing his attention and keeping it fast. He wondered, vaguely, when she had acquired the new ability to capture his interest so readily, to call awareness to the curve of her face, her profile, lit with the weak rays of sunlight, filtering between heavy clouds. It was almost too difficult to drag his story back out of his soul as his eyes and part of his mind seemed much happier fixated on the woman before him.

Unsettled and slowly growing furious with himself, Sesshoumaru caught the thread of his tale and spoke again, though his eyes remained with her.

"But not all died. Those who remained reformed, but stayed small, gained power slowly, and did not rush into their battles. A warrior, a hunter, was sent after The Mage, his wife, and their two children. With enough power their clan could finally seek revenge, could finally steal away the sorcerery that had eluded them for so long.

"They killed the former huntress and her son. They battled with the Mage and he was separated from his daughter, who he told to flee, to stay down and away, to never resurface in the world again. He fought and never came back and she believed him dead.

"She did not follow his wishes. She was angry and wanted retribution. She grew up and joined the very forces that had ordered her mother and father's death. She did not know it was they, the hunters, and they did not know it was she, the daughter of the Mage. The daughter believed the hunters to be good, because her mother had once told her that her clan had been obliterated, that their evil had ended. So, blindly, the daughter joined the ranks of the very people who had created her suffering.

"It did not take long before her superiors, greater sorcerers, found out her heritage. But instead of killing her, or using her to find her father, they manipulated her and sent her on a warpath, one that was false and wrong, one that led her straight to me, the man she was told had killed her family."

Kagome's head whipped toward him, mouth parted in surprise, eyes wide.

"She came after you?" She asked in a hushed whisper. "Didn't she know you who you were? Didn't they tell her that you were the warlord who killed their ranks-"

Sesshoumaru shrugged, "Perhaps. I do not think it mattered much to her. She was single minded. At that time her soul purpose in life was to see the end of the man who murdered her family. Revenge can make one blind. It is a dangerous thing, taking on such a vendetta. And I believe that the hunters who manipulated her told her as little as possible. In their eyes, they believed that if I knew of her existence I might spare her and my mercy would be my downfall, that she would succeed in killing me, or wounding me, and that perhaps I would exact as much or more damage on her. If it had worked out in their favor they would have rid themselves of their worst problems."

"Whathappened?"

Sesshoumaru smiled faintly. "What do you think happened?"

Kagome leveled him with a measured gaze. Her eyes bore into his, intense and scrutinizing, and he knew that she had already seen the truth beneath his words.

"You _were_ merciful. You spared her. I have seen you battle," she murmured, staring into his face, "and there are none who match you. So you were merciful and let her live. How did you know who she was?"

He laughed then, low and deep, "Do you not think the Mage would have children much like himself? She was like him. She fought like him, she was a mage like him, she spoke like him, she spoke _of him_ and I knew who she was.

"Yes, I spared her and told her who I was. Who I was to her father. She had not known of my connection to the Mage. I can only assume he tried to outrun all of his past, even his allies, all his stories, all his history, in an attempt to create a new life."

Kagome sighed and the intense light in her eyes smoldered, dimmed, and burned away. Almost wistfully she said, "He was trying to protect his children and his wife."

Sesshoumaru said nothing, but rather turned and looked back out at the rain. Kagome pondered quietly, her face pinched with concentration, her thoughts nearly tangible. After a long pause, the silence punctuated only by the light tap of rain on the windowpane, she spoke again.

"He was very brave."

"He was a good ally."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her turn to look at him. "He was more than that. And that is why you helped his daughter."

Sesshoumaru did not speak, but he knew he did not have to. He turned his gaze away from the window and their eyes met, silent understanding and unspoken words filling the space between them.

"I imagine she told you all this then, once she realized you were not her family's killer. You pieced together what you didn't know at the time. That explains why you were so shocked to hear he was alive. She thought he was and so…did…"

She trailed off, all emotion slipping away from her slackened face.

"My god, does she know he lived? Did _he_ know _she_ lived?"

Sesshoumaru shifted in the chair, hunched forward and balanced his elbows on his knees as his long fingers laced together.

"If she knew, she told no one. I spoke with the Mage about his daughter only once, while we were on the mountain. He knew she lived. He knew, somehow, that I had a hand in her survival. I do not think he ever tried to contact her. It was far too dangerous. The hunters believed him to be dead and after she came to terms with me, I helped her disappear. Everyone who knew of her before her altercation with me believes her to be dead."

Kagome paled and her hand flew to her mouth. "The hunters are so dangerous he never spoke with his daughter again? Surely there were ways-"

"Of course there were ways," he cut in sharply, "but the Mage did not want to risk her life again. His involvement in the past, his power, his assistance with the demon was his downfall. He believed the risk was too great. He did not wish to endanger her again."

The woman shook her head in morbid disbelief. "Did you speak to her when you took Aeron?"

"No."

"But-"

He turned toward her, leaning over the arm of the chair, piercing her with the fierce intensity of his gaze.

"Kagome, there was nothing I could tell her that she did not already know. She is like her mother and her father. She was raised a warrior. If anything, she understood better than her father, the peril he would have placed them both in had he ever sought after her. She is well and she is out of the clutches of the people who took her life away from her. It is neither my job nor my duty to console her."

His breath was a jagged knife under each word, harsh and biting. But any irritation he felt paled in comparison to the blazing light of indignation burning in Kagome's eyes and flushed across her cheeks.

"He was your ally and your friend! Who else's duty would it be? I would think she would appreciate hearing it from the man who saved her life and knew her father when he lived."

She stood abruptly, and pushed away from the chair, stalking to the farthest corner of the dimly lit room to stare out the window, her face a grey thundercloud, hands clenched into fists.

Sesshoumaru sat silently, musing morosely.

She was right of course, and he loathed it. But whether it was because she had shown him his own personal insufficiency or because she dared to be so presumptuous, he was unsure and unwilling to decide. He glanced at her, an enigma, standing in his midst, a confounding mystery that still managed to surprise him and infuriate him at the most inopportune moments.

But it did not matter much, her irritating ability to rile him and shake him out of his comfortable, secure perception of himself, because she was right and he was wrong.

Curse her and her perception.

Silently but colorfully, he spewed obscenities through his mind.

Damn her.

Life would be so much easier if he did not have to navigate around her and appease her and learn from her and teach her and grow around her and realize that she was important-

And that life would be very much _not_ the same without her.

He stood slowly, hating his remorse, hating the weakness that lead to remorse, a weakness that had appeared a very long time prior to the one he was so unhappily existing in. And that moment, the few tiny seconds between the time she rounded the corner and walked into his chest, small and unhappy in a marble hallway, were illuminated in front of him, a blaring reminder of how imperfectly everything liked to work out.

As if approaching a very dangerous animal, he made his way to her, to stop, standing just behind her rigid back, his eyes fixed on her head, resolutely turned toward the window, splattered with summer rain.

She did not acknowledge him but he was far past caring if she deferred to his authority or not. She had long ago proved she would rarely do such a thing.

And he liked her anyway, so it was all right.

His hand settled on her shoulder and she stiffened at the contact, something she had not done since he first knew her.

"Perhaps," he started, through gritted teeth and wounded honor, "you are right. He was an ally and a fellow warrior. Perhaps I should have spoken to her."

"Or perhaps you know best," she murmured, cutting off his forced, partial apology. "You are right, Sesshoumaru, when you say I don't understand _things_. I am not a warrior, or a mage. I have not gone through what she has, what you have. And I have no understanding. Sometimes I think I do and then I see things… I watch a man sacrifice himself to save his companions; I watch as all the people around me pour their faith into me, watch as they protect me and defend me because they believe I can save them and the world with it. And then I remember that I am very silly and naïve and that I know nothing at all."

He frowned and shifted on his feet, maneuvering to see the side of her face, his fingers turning her toward him. She resisted and crossed her arms.

Sometimes, many times, she was more stubborn than Inuyasha.

"I did not tell you where I was taking the accountant-" He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth,"-_Aeron_- because I knew you would want to know… would want to know everything. We left early, you needed sleep."

He saw the hint of a smile, there, at the corner of her mouth, and an amused sound escaped her parted lips. "I know. I understand. I'm not angry."

He tugged again on her shoulder and she turned a little more, but kept her face away, her arms crossed, kept him out and away from her thoughts.

"We don't have very much time do we?" She asked him softly, head bowing as she spoke.

"No, we do not, but I would think you to know better than I."

She chortled and finally looked up at him. "I don't know. Not really. It's just a horrible feeling, compressing down on me, constricting my air and…" Her words faded and her hands, which had slowly relaxed at her side, lifted and waved, as if she were dispelling her thoughts from her head.

"What's her name?"

Her words were feather light and delicate and when he answered his own voice was hushed and quiet, respectful of the past and the suffering of another.

"Suzu."

Kagome grinned and her eyes brightened as she turned to fully face him. "Ah, the bell. He named her after it." Her fingers curled around the silver chain at her neck and lifted up the tiny trinkets before her eyes. The Bell and Vajra shone with silver light, dancing on the end of the bright chain. "I see why you believed him to be so fond of me now. Did this belong to her?" She shook the necklace before him, each tiny movement refracting light into his eyes.

"No. It was his wife's."

"I suppose she was the Bell to his Vajra?"

Sesshoumaru snorted with dark laughter. "It must be true. Only a very certain woman could have balanced that foolish man."

"Yes, I suppose you are right."

Sesshoumaru watched as her smile faded almost instantly into a frown, the lines and worry returning to cloud her eyes and slump her shoulders.

It seemed very wrong and out of place to see her in such a state. He had experienced many of her moods, and some of them, when they were first learning the ins and outs of one another, had been short and explosive, had shifted back and forth so violently he had wondered if she was even sane. When first they met he saw the depth to which her unhappiness reached, saw it and watched it fade away before his eyes, dissipating into the wind as the world continued to turn and they continued to fight.

But the emotions before him, so thick he tasted them on the air, felt them as if they were his own, he had only felt once, seated on a tiled roof, under the starlit sky, the first night she truly trusted him and let him in.

But her walls were back and she was not looking him in the eye. She was not telling him what bothered her or made her so sorrowful, refused to give him the inch that would let him know exactly what could have possibly happened within three days time to so change her from the fiery, young woman she had been, into what she was then and there before him.

"There is something I wish to show you," he said abruptly, removing his hand from her shoulder, turning and leading the way out of the room.

He led her away from her room and toward his own. She padded along behind him, followed closely by Ajax, who soon eclipsed their pace an ran into Sesshoumaru's study ahead of them, seating himself on the carpet, looking back at them with bright, pleased eyes.

Sesshoumaru frowned at the dog as he stepped over him and walked to his desk. Kagome walked around the large table to stand at his side as he reached within one of the deep drawers, withdrawing a large, mangled cloth pack, the bag the Mage had given them to take down the mountain.

He laid it on the clean desktop and reached inside, carefully removing and placing the contents on the desk.

"The Mage asked me to get this from his room," She announced, leaning down to peer at the objects.

Sesshoumaru's claws clicked along the smooth surface as he laid out strips of paper, strands of beads, odds and ends of things, before their eyes.

Curious fingers reached out and traced the small stack of O-fuda, smoothing along the tattered edges of the thin paper, tracing the clean sweeping black marks, the names of ancient incantations, the prayers of a monk.

"Are these-"

"Talisman, yes, I asked him to make these for me."

"There aren't any in here that invoke invisibility are there?" She inquired suspiciously.

He looked down at the top of her dark head, frowning, equally wary. "Possibly. Why?"

"Uh. No real reason. Simply curious," she stammered gracelessly.

"Of course," he said loftily, as if it was quite normal to be suspicious of invisibility talisman, which, in his opinion, it was not.

Her hand traced a path to a set of beads, not unlike those of Inuyasha. Picking them up she held them before her eyes, examining them curiously.

"Prayer beads," she murmured. "Do you think they were his?"

Sesshoumaru reached and extricated the rosary from her hands. With careful precision he ran the length of the necklace through his fingers, weighed it in the palm of his hand, and allowed his magic to pool and wash over the object, searching for anything hidden from sight.

"It might have been. There is nothing to indicate that there is anything at all exceptional or noteworthy about it."

When he found nothing he handed it back to Kagome who peered at it a moment more before placing it back on the desk.

She reached then for the few idle pieces of parchment, most of which were blank, but several held the Mage's telltale writing, dark and thin, scrawled across the pages. She held them up before Sesshoumaru's face and he narrowed his eyes at the words, reading them quickly.

"He wrote down our account of how we made it to the mountain, in the library. Do you remember?"

She flipped through the pages and nodded vaguely before reaching out to search through the remained of the items on the desk, a book, of no particular importance, a small piece of wood, broken off of something at one point, a few more bound parchment pieces, each blank, and finally, the pack itself. Kagome tipped it upside down and shook it gently and when nothing fell out, examined each corner and crevice, untied each pocket and fished her fingers inside.

"Ah!" She exclaimed, as Sesshoumaru heard her fingers brush across a piece of paper.

She disentangled her hand from the pocket and with her fingers came a small piece of thin parchment. Both Kagome and Sesshoumaru leaned in to examine it, each staring at it with such intensity it was a wonder it did not combust under the pressure.

"I can't read it, what does it say?"

He was quiet for several beats of his heart, stared down at the words, the impossible reality before his face.

"Would you be willing to wait for an explanation?" He looked back into her face, frowned at the fatigue and sadness therein, and hoped, desperately, that she would say yes.

Sesshoumaru may have been a blunt man, may have had little interest or awareness of other people, but something, something almost primitive and simple told him to wait, just a day, maybe two, just to hold off and wait for her to be there, wait for her to be in the right mind, wait for her to be stronger.

Because standing there next to him, she seemed small and weak, never helpless, but devoid of strength, suffering.

"Yes," she said frankly.

"Then I will tell you later."

"You can tell me tomorrow," she said placidly.

Sesshoumaru allowed his eyes to roam over her once again, and his frown deepened.

Through the open window behind his desk, the sweet afternoon breeze blew, the sound of rain thrumming gently in the background. And out over his lands summer bloomed, easily and carelessly, enveloping spring quietly, taking over and pushing the mild season away for another year.

It was summer.

Abruptly and suddenly, realization hit and overwhelmed.

"Do you know what today is, Kagome?"

It was a silly question. She knew. And now he did, too.

She looked up into his face, holding his intense stare with unwavering certainty.

"Of course I do, Sesshoumaru," her voice was strong, but only to cover memory and remorse, because underneath its fortitude it shook with tremors that may have gone unheard had he not known her so well.

Slowly, knowing he understood, with great resilience she said, "It is the first day of summer."

And he saw her, inside emerald eyes, tremble and break.

He reached up a hand, and his fingers hovered, poised next to her cheek.

He could feel the warmth radiating off her skin, could almost feel its smooth planes, his fingers were so close. And as he wavered, he wondered what held him back, what stalled him and stopped him. And because he could think of no real pressing reason to remain uncertain, he let go, and watched like a spectator, as his fingers dusted a careful trail over her skin.

With the gentlest of touches, his nails and his calloused fingers memorized the curve of her cheekbone, the strong sweep of her jaw, his wandering hand finally resting against the side of her face, his thumb smoothing over her eyebrow, fingers curled against her cheek and the tender skin of her neck. His thumb traced down again, brushing over her eyelashes as she blinked at him, holding her breath, waiting as his finger stilled against her temple, resting there, the ghost of a caress.

"Today is the day your mother died."

She said nothing, but she did not have to, because he knew and she knew and that was all that mattered.

And Sesshoumaru looked away from her, to the tiny slip of paper on the table, scrawled with five simple words, words that changed his world and hers, words that could wait another day, words that might end the simple brush of fingers across her face.

And he looked back at her and she smiled and together they turned from the window and from the piece of paper and walked away.

And even as the shadow of her mother followed her down the hallway, she smiled at him.

And in his mind he stared down at the scrap of parchment, the neatly written kanji, and those five little words-

_Kagome is the Shikon Jewel_.

And crumpled them in his fist, cast them away for a different day, stayed instead in her presence, and reveled in freedom.


	35. Found

_Sorry for lateness. College is a bitch. Seriously. Never enroll. Thanks for the reviews. _

* * *

**Chapter 35**

**Found**

Aeron could have stood there forever, on the threshold of the future.

Even with his newfound bravery, he felt like a terrible coward.

There was always something about the unknown that had frightened him.

But standing in the alleyway, with the sunlight tricking down and lighting the tips of his dark hair, warming his back and glancing off his glasses, he would have gladly fallen into a wormhole and stayed forever, stalk still and frightened.

But that was not to be, because even as he waited for the courage to turn the handle upon which his fingers rested, the ivy covered door, the greenery encrusted entry opened and he stared into the face of the future.

And it was beautiful.

He blinked once, hardly daring to breathe. But when he expelled the pent up air from his lungs and the vision before him did not fade into oblivion, remained, for all he could see quite real and solid, he smiled.

And the vision before him did the same.

Aeron had spent much of his time in the past few months flitting around in his reality, as if floating through a dream. There were moments where clarity was so real and true that it took his breath away and cleared all other thoughts from his head. But for the majority of the time he had descended into the alternate reality that was his life, and everything, every little detail of his existence had suddenly become muddy and unclear.

Even as Kagome had returned and given some explanation- although fantastic and by all rights, completely untrue- he had still felt as if he would never quite grasp the situation he had been thrust into. And even as he felt the power of the Mage, the man who had bequeathed his weaponry to Aeron, he had struggled to believe that he was truly alive and real and was not stuck inside his own head, dreaming stories.

And even as Sesshoumaru had left him to stand facing an empty alleyway, even as he had felt and seen magic all around him, through him, he felt as if the world under his feet was swaying out from under, that he might in fact, be crazy.

But while all the doubts circling his head whirled nearly so fast he became dizzy, the sight before him reached out and caught hold, and like a tether or a lifeline to a drowning man, he was pulled and anchored in, returning back inside his head, gaining clarity he had thought lost.

"Come," a voice said, quiet but sure of itself, "follow me."

Aeron blinked again, wondrously, and stepped over the gated entrance, watching with keen interest as the form before him moved aside to allow him in. He stepped past and once inside his eyes swept over the scene before him.

He stared, open-mouthed.

He stood in a courtyard, full of soft afternoon sunlight. All around him were trees and ivy, growing up old, moss covered wood, leaves hanging down through the spaced slats of an overhead rooftop. Beneath his feet grass and moss grew between heavy, ancient stones, laid flat and radiating outward to the trees, lined against the walls of buildings and the iron fence he had passed through.

He took a step forward and peered through the lazy drift of the light and saw the stone pathway curving under archways and tree branches, hanging low and boxing in the narrow trail. He looked above and searched for the skyscrapers and planes of the sky, any sign that he was in the midst of a teeming city thriving with life.

But he could see nothing but the verdant color of the leaves, the blue of the sky, arching and pure above him.

He felt eyes on his back and slowly he turned to face the one he had been sent to.

She was truly arresting, with her short, dark hair, the black eyes, twinkling with good humor and mirth, the gentle lift of her lips, a hidden smile to accompany a hidden quip. She was lean and slender, much shorter than he, but by no means weak or delicate. Her shoulders were strong, held straight and proud, she balanced perfectly on her feet, and even without knowing her, the man knew she was light and quick, could disappear within the blink of an eye.

And he knew, innately, somehow, that she was a warrior.

Not like Sesshoumaru or his younger brother. Not like Kagome, who in her time with the two brothers had become something other, something formidable. Not like any person he had ever met.

But she reminded him very much of another distant soul, one he would never see in life, of that he was sure.

And as if to agree, the bracelets around his wrists warmed and hummed, and a tranquil, contented slide of emotions washed over him, radiated between his heart and his hands, and bathed the courtyard in feelings and memories that were not his own, but part of him nonetheless.

Her eyes fell from his face to his wrists where the gold glowed brightly, begging for her attention. He watched, reserved and dubious, as her dark eyes widened, and flashed back to his face.

She took a step forward, peering at him like she would an unfamiliar street, curious but confused, and underlying it al, he could feel her tension, the ebb and flow of her disbelief.

"Sesshoumaru sent you?" She inquired slowly, her voice soft but intense and demanding, an urgency curling darkly beneath each word.

Aeron swallowed and attempted to recall the process of speech. "Yes."

Another step, and her eyes were drawn back down to the weapons about his hands.

She inhaled calmly, steeling her breath, preparing to ask him something she did not want to. Her face was drawn but she was resolute, even as cloudy, well-hidden fear appeared in her dark eyes.

"How," she started, voice clear and calm, "did you get those?" Her hand rose and a finger pointed to the gleaming gold around his hands.

"I was given them from a friend."

Her dark eyes flew back to his face. "And this friend is who?"

Aeron wavered, uncertain. "She was a woman I knew once. She left our home and went on adventures. She met a man. And that man gave her these."

The dark haired woman regarded him with a flinty stare but he could almost see the thoughts whirling around her head and in her distracted eyes.

"And that man," she murmured, looking away from him, turning her face toward the sunlight drifting down from above, "who was he?"

Aeron took a deep cleansing breath, welcoming the feel of air into his lungs, stared at the profile of the woman before him, and wondered if this was to be the great climax of his journey, if after this built up, strained, and somehow intangible important moment before him, he would find some balance.

"The Mage," he pronounced quietly to the afternoon, to the sunlight and the leaves, to the blue sky, to the city somewhere around him. "She called him the Mage."

The woman nodded curtly and looked away, but not before he saw the pinch and pull of her features, the dark cloud that passed over her face.

And then she was moving, walking away from him down the path he had seen, hidden in the shadows of the shade. She gestured over her shoulder for him to follow her and with a startled jolt he stepped after her and followed her quick steps.

She walked with absolute purpose, and soon, even with his long legs to aide him, she was quite far ahead, which, he felt, was really quite fine, because he was far too busy staring at the beauty surrounding him.

From the courtyard the path swept under trees and old fashioned pillars. The wooden gateways were placed one after another along and above the pathway, and through the break in the archways he could see a great expanse of greenery, stretching far in all directions. The area was littered with tall and ancient trees, flowers, overgrown vegetation and exotic plants. His pace slowed as he searched for an end to the green, and there, almost hidden by the light and the shade, mingling together to dust the garden in mystery and magic, he saw the faint edge of a high wall, covered in ivy.

The place whispered of tranquility and sang of secrets. In the trees he heard the faint fluttering of birds, the slip and slide of their song, could make out the sound of trickling water, and above it all there was nothing but the sound of the wind and the silence that would not accompany a place in the middle of a city.

The woman did not break her stride as the stone path beneath them tapered off and melted into soft rolling grass. Behind her, Aeron followed with heavy reluctance, eyes watchful and curious of his surroundings. Ahead, breaking through the trees, surrounded with sunlight and the leaves of trees and something he could not name, was a low standing building, old, perhaps ancient, traditional, and simple.

The lithe figure of the woman hurried up a set of modest stairs and Aeron followed her, though, really, all he wanted to do was throw his hands up in the air and scream. But he didn't. Instead he concentrated on the thud of his feet against the old wood below him, and hoped, desperately, that the woman he followed would tell him all he did not know.

She passed between two open paper screens, gliding into the inner sanctums of the building, and into a shadowy room. Aeron halted at the doorway, blinking against the sudden change in light, his eyes adjusting rapidly from sunlight to shady indoor area. The dark haired beauty had moved to the center of the modest room where a low lying table sat, strewn with a delicate teapot and several cups. With a gentle grace, she descended to the floor beside the smooth table, her hand rising and gesturing to a spot across from her.

With great reluctance he walked across the room and moved to sit, much less gracefully than she. He sat on the floor, his fingers biting into the woven mat beneath him, digging in unconsciously, tension coiling throughout his arms and back, a rigid reminder of all that was wrong.

He lifted his eyes and watched her over the rims of his glasses, blurred but real. She ignored him and reached across the table, her long slender fingers drawing two cups toward her, her free hand pouring the tea with expert finesse.

The steaming liquid rose to the edge of the cup and she pushed one toward him. Aeron cast a surreptitious glance down at the steaming water beneath him, catching the rippling reflection of his eye, inscrutable and weak.

"So the great warlord sent you here," she said in a quiet undertone.

Aeron glanced up from the tea and its steam, coiling beneath his nose.

"Yes."

"Why?" She inquired abruptly, her sharp eyes locking onto his. Over her teacup, poised against her lips, she watched him, waiting.

Aeron hedged silently, frowning. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the glint of the bracelets around his wrists and he sighed, feeling exhausted and torn.

"He sent me because I was given these and I have no idea how to use them. Supposedly this Mage believed that I would know what to do with them. All I succeeded in was blowing up a dojo and angering two very powerful men."

A dark eyebrow rose fractionally, and had the porcelain cup not covered her lips, Aeron was quite sure he would have seen the barest hint of an amused smile. This confused him somewhat, and with the state of his mind, jumbled and tangled as it was, he did not have the patience or the desire to sort through the implications of that very small gesture.

"He did not tell me where we were going, but then," he said slowly, thoughtfully, "I am under the impression he does not tell much to many."

"No," she agreed, sipping her tea carefully, "he does not."

"So you know him then?" He asked, running a finger around he curve of his cup.

"Yes, I do. He saved my life once. After I tried to kill him."

Aeron probably should have been much more surprised, shocked, or horrified by her statement, but all he seemed capable of mustering was a faint, "Oh," and managing mild, detached interest.

"He sent you to the right place. I am sure that this was his last resort. He would not have sent you otherwise. To do so puts us all in great danger. But nevertheless…" She trailed off and her eyes looked out over the impressive expanse of gardens and greenery. "Nevertheless. It must be done and it will."

"What must, exactly, be done?" He asked stupidly.

Those dark eyes, sparkling with deep and hidden humor, turned back on his face, and for a very brief moment, he thought he was looking into the face of someone else, echoed faintly in hers.

"You were sent here to do that which you could not anywhere else. You will learn magic because it is in you and it is of you. And you will be the mage because he is gone and you are here."

"I can't be the Mage," he whispered faintly, "I can't _be_ him."

"You won't have to be," she assured him, her tone gentling, consoling. "It would not matter anyway. No matter how hard you try, you could never be him. No one could. But you will take his place because he meant for it to be so. You would not be wearing those weapons now if he had not intended you to. And so now," she continued, sipping her tea once more, draining the cup, "you have a decision to make."

"I do?" He asked tremulously, weakly.

She nodded, "Of course. There are always choices to be made. You seem to believe you have had very few. And this might be true. But you always had the choice, at one point or another, to walk away. When the friend you speak of gave you those golden rings you could have handed them back and left both she and her companions to their fate. But here you are, sitting in my home.

"I have seen many more years than appears. I have experienced far more than I wish on my worst enemy, though I hope he burns in hell despite my wise and knowledgeable heart. I have remained here, behind these walls to preserve my life, to wait and watch and see when the world would change. It seems now is that time.

"My father once told me that he would never change his life, past, present or future, because he always believed things were meant to fall the way they were. But, he said, there will always be choices, and as much as we are pulled along by fate, or gods, or personal beliefs, or unbound, unconnected events, by luck, by misfortune, we can always decide.

"So the question remains."

"What is your question?"

She smiled, a sad little twinkle in the depth of her dark features, "It is not my question. It is yours."

The sound of the wind died away, the erratic and nervous thump of his heart dissipated, the soft fall of his breath, and hers, across the table, fell into nothing, and Aeron was all that was left, his words falling into silence so complete, he thought the world had fallen quiet just to hear him speak.

"Will I stay or will I run?"

She nodded once and the slight and silent breeze blew dark tendrils of hair across her forehead. He stared at them, mesmerized, struggling to grasp the enormity of his decision, of the yes and of the no, and around his wrists the bracelets lay, still and cold, as if they had never once given him power or invaded his soul. But he could feel him there, the man who had died, the mage who had seen his face and killed himself for some greater good. He could see him and feel him, the tingle along his soul, the buoyancy of hope, not his own, but given to him anyway.

And for the first time in his life, feeling real and scared and excited and brave and cowardly and wrong and right and confused and muddled and blurry and sharp and tired and ready-

Aeron wondered what he was afraid of.

The unknown, surely, but was that not what he had always craved?

Yes, he answered himself, yes it was.

"Yes," he uttered, his eyes falling from the gentle sweep of dark hair to the shinning black eyes, full of the past and the unknown and things he could not name, "I will stay."

She smiled and Aeron thought she was perhaps the truest thing he had ever seen.

* * *

Kagura stood in the shadows, sharp eyes watching the man hobble over the broken ground, stumbling in the pitch black dark, his hands out before him, searching, searching, searching.

She could taste his fear in the air. It invaded her mouth, her nose. She could almost see it, blood red and bright, before her eyes. And she could hear it in his breathing, sharp and hitched, echoing just below the shuffling sound of his footsteps.

He was afraid and rightfully so.

She walked beside him at a distance, slinking through the shadows, parting the air to sneak and slither. But a moment later, the man halted, and nearly fell to the floor.

The demoness stepped back, sinking further into the dark.

_He_ was coming.

It did not take long before he appeared through the shadows, half hidden, wearing them like a cloak, his face apparent, his hair and body blending into the black.

Even after all her years, he was still the most frightening thing she had ever seen. His pristine and carefully carved features did nothing to dispel the cold, aching depth of depravity in his eyes, the smooth cut of his brow did not hide the dark thoughts whirling around in a single minded head, and his lips, perfect for speech and communing his commands and words, were the worst. For as much as they were beautiful, they were what she feared would kill her in the night, the gnash of teeth, the ripping jaws.

"My lord," the man was saying, sweeping a low bow, his robes fluttering around his feet and arms as he bowed his head, "I have come with information."

Onigumo raised his head and regarded the man over his long nose, a pleased, smug, twisted smile slowly crawling across his face, lighting it with dark victory.

The man bowed lower, staring into the dark beneath him, his voice quaking as he spoke, "I listened and watched as you requested of me. It was quite easy, my lord, to do as you asked. I remained in the shadows and listened to all of it, everything they said."

"And what did you learn?" The voice slithered out into the air, deep and cold like the endless winter night, so distant and powerful, the space around him shifted uncomfortably, subsiding only when the last syllable left his lips.

"I learned perhaps the greatest secret."

As if the place had not already echoed of utter silence, a harsher hush fell, and through a strained second, through a ripple in time, the future was held before the wicked demon of the underworld.

"The girl is the Shikon Jewel."

Silence answered, but faraway, with gathering force, the sound of fury could be heard, erupting with great and effortless ease, inside the shell of a man, inside the absent soul of a devil.

"The sorcerer told the warrior that the jewel would not be recovered unless she was alive. It is impossible to find it without her. Before he could relay more information, the monastery was attacked and the Mage was killed."

"His weapons?"

"Were given to the girl. Though I know not why. I saw her with them, in the aftermath, on the side of the mountain."

From where Kagura stood, hidden in the shadows, she could see the pale rage, swimming across his flawless face, sparkling and kindling in red pupils.

"You have served me well. You may go."

The monk bowed lower still, before backing away and retreating into the dark.

Vermillion eyes turned to her, flashing with malice and broiling fury.

"Kagura."

She stepped forward, always the obedient servant, "Yes, my lord?"

"_Kill him_."

"Yes, my lord."

She parted the night and spilled crimson blood.

* * *

"I am so sorry."

"So am I. But this is the way it must be. And he was a good man and it is only fitting, I think, that he should die like he did, for his companions. He would not have given up his life if he had not needed to. He believed in this cause. He believed in the Warlord, he believed in the brother, he believed in your friend, the Protector, and he believed in you."

"He didn't know me."

"He did not need to. Do you know how men like my father become so powerful?"

"No."

"They pass on what they know to an apprentice. Do you know why there are so few men as powerful as the Mage?"

"No."

"Because there are few men- or women- who can control such power. Imagine holding a bowl and placing a coin inside. Each person after you must also put in a coin. Soon the bowl would become heavy, because each individual has put a little of himself within. Perhaps the bowl would grow with the contents. After a time it would become difficult for some to hold the object without straining. That, essentially, is what great sorcerer's do."

"There are very few who can control the magic of others?"

"It is not that simple. There are very few men who would willingly give their magic to _another_. Most people are selfish. Most with the ability to perform great acts of sorcery and magic will only serve themselves. But there are some, some who are tied together by a common thread of belief, that wish to serve a greater purpose. And _because_ there are so few men willing to give power, and _because_ there are so few men who are unwilling to take power and form it and shape it only to give it up again, there are rare few men like my father."

"Is that the only way to become so powerful?"

"No. But anyone else who needed to be so powerful would be selfish. My father was a powerful man because he served a powerful cause. He was powerful to help the powerful. Do you think the average sorcerer can open the gates of the underworld and help throw a demon in?"

"I have no idea. I would assume not."

"You would assume correct. He was powerful in his own right but he could control his magic _and_ the magic of his predecessors. He was raised for the task. So were those who came before him."

"So that's why I cannot control it?"

"Partially. You were not raised to be a sorcerer. You did not know magic existed. You did not know you had power. You do not believe in the power that is at your fingertips. And you have received the greatest amount of magic any of _your_ forefathers have been given. It seems that even if you were groomed from a young age to accept this task, it might have been beyond your capability to fully control it. As it is, it will always be difficult."

"I don't think I understand."

"I am saying that because you- or my father's weapons, however you choose to see it- hold a large amount of power and that for the purposes of this quest and the role you are to play, using small magic could be, potentially, deadly."

"I-oh- _what_?"

"If something with great force and volume and weight begins to move, say, down a steep incline, it is difficult to stop, is it not?"

"Yes."

"It is the same thing with the power you have been given to wield. If you attempt to do something… insignificant… it will be difficult for you to reign in your power. It would be better for you to only use your magic for great things."

"Is that why I blew up the dojo?"

"Most likely. That and you have no idea what you are doing. Unfortunately, while the men and women who came before you were brilliant and powerful, they did not anticipate an apprentice without a master. Or perhaps they did? Perhaps you were meant to come here."

"That doesn't seem right at all. Why would your father- if it as he who meant for me to come here- want you to be found out? It is dangerous. Your enemy, the man who killed your family could-"

"Could find me, yes. But now that my father is gone there is no reason to hide. I secluded myself because Sesshoumaru asked me to. My father hid from me to save me. Now that he has died, there is no reason for me to remain here. The strongest of our family has left and with him the chance for our enemies to steal and claim the majority of his power. Now there is only you and assisting the man who is to take the Mage's place is much more important than my enemies."

"You will help me do this?"

"Yes."

"…Thank you."

* * *

Aeron woke to the faint sound of rain splattering on the wooden floor outside his open door. Blearily, he opened his eyes and peered out into the blurry world. Blindly, he reached, his long fingers searching for his glasses.

Groggily, he placed them on his face and blinked through the suddenly clear vision, staring up into the arching wooden beams of the small room he slept in. It took a long, dragging moment for his thoughts to collect themselves from the previous day and come tumbling down over him in a mad whirl of confusion and information.

Some of the blanks were filled and despite all that he had endured, Aeron was feeling a bit more confident, or, quite possibly if not confident, cemented in his new arena of life. Either way, despite the vague comfort settled in his chest, he was still a might bit troubled, confused, and generally unsure.

In truth, he still had no idea what he was supposed to be doing.

Speaking of magic and carrying on a conversation about the great secrets of sorcerers and mages was one thing, but actually believing it to the extent that he could wield said power was another. Every half-second he was quite sure that someone was going to turn to him and tell him they had mistaken him for another magically inclined accountant from a museum and send him on his way.

To make matters worse, to top off the internal struggle going on between his confidence and belief and his uncertainty and doubt, there was the niggling, nagging tug of power that did not truly belong to him, tapping him on the shoulder.

Upon further inspection, and many, many hours of solitude spent at Sesshoumaru's mansion, Aeron had come to the very sure conclusion that the strange yearn that had surrounded him for so many years, the desire and unnecessary need to know Kagome Higurashi was very much like the laughably cheerful and expectant emotions, memories, and general feel of the golden weapons worn about his wrists. It was very disconcerting, he discovered, lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling above him, to have emotions that did not belong to him, popping in and out of his thoughts, bending his personality at will.

Even as he lay, slowly waking up, with nothing between he and the floor but a thin blanket, trying very hard to be grumpy and irritable and angry with the world and his fate, he was having a most difficult time dispelling the cheerful and excited zing that lanced through the gold and then through his middle, urging him to sit up ad meet the day. And through the seemingly exuberant emotions he could sense the urgency, carefully veiled and hidden under the twinkling elation, reminding him of what he was truly doing and how very selfish he was being.

After all, he was expected to help save the world, if he had heard everyone correctly.

And he could not find it within his selfish self to lie all day in bed silently echoing the woes and troubles of his misfortune.

He rolled over and stood, grimacing against the creaks and cracks of his bones. The morning was proving to be bleak indeed, but there was at least one silver lining to the future.

Or, perhaps, if he dared to be positive, there were two.

He was out of the office and despite all his lamentations, despite all that worried and scared him, around corners and in the shadows of the trees, in the depths of his mind, he thought he saw the return of the little boy he had once been, an adventuresome, intrigued young man, smiling from somewhere just out of sight.

Oh, and he had learned her name. It was Suzu and it fit her well.

* * *

"Is it true? Is she the only way to possess the jewel?"

He did not answer her, but in his absence of words she heard his fear. Between them the shadow of a greater, purer man loomed, Sesshoumaru, Protector of all that was good and great and free.

Kagura thought her master might have felt it too, because a moment later he raised his hand and black light tinged with red exploded into the air like a blasphemous curse.

She shied away from the hatred, the putrid horrible malice, caustic in the air. He was as shattered glass, beautiful and deadly, poised for catastrophe. She could feel it only because he was losing control, so consumed with the grave and ill-fated news.

He was losing the ground he had never gained and his end seemed to be closer than ever before.

"Of course it would be true," he snarled to her, like her words had only just sunk in. "These are powerful objects. Do not be a fool. Of course they would safe guard themselves against me. The sword searched out the girl for _itself_. It did not even reside in its maker's hands until it was touched by the girl. Why should the more powerful of the two weapons not find a way to stay further from my grasp?

"I cannot touch the sword, not yet. I am not powerful enough. And my greatest enemy seems to enjoy much further control over it this time. I cannot possibly hope to possess it now. Not unless the warrior himself fell. And that is impossible. There is no match for him. None but me. He _will not_ fall easily. Not this time.

"And he will possess the jewel. With the girl he will gain all of his power. Even as they lost the Mage they were given his greatest weapons. They still retain some, if not all of his power. The girl will never be taken from them. I am too weak to attempt to steal her away. I cannot. He will protect her above all things. Without her there is no sword and no jewel. She is essential to him, and necessary for me. It would be of the utmost foolishness to attack in the hopes of wrestling her away. She provides the possibility of power. Her death would be of a great loss to each of us.

"There is no certainty that her supposed power would return. And with her death she would take the possibility of ultimate power. Sesshoumaru is too honorable and righteous to ever use the magic she and his weapons hold. But I do not shy away from such a challenge. To gain power firs I must lose it."

"I do not understand."

The face before her sneered and sharp tendrils of curling power shot forth, gripping her chin and throat, hoisting her face up, exposing it to his view.

"No," he snarled roughly, the sound dripping with disdain, "you would not because you are simple and cannot possibly understand what I need and desire. I have already lost, Kagura. Fate seems to believe it can beat me and has done its very best to help those who would destroy me. Already I am undone."

The pressure around her throat increased and her vision dimmed from black to red.

"But Fate, like the good, virtuous, righteous, people and beings who seek to overthrow me and end me forever, is blind. It is unassuming and idiotic. There is no destiny that I cannot tear apart, that I cannot unmake."

The grip loosened and the demoness slumped to the floor, gasping, dragging in precious oxygen.

"There are always ways, Kagura. Always."

He drifted away, disappearing into the dark as it welcomed him with open arms.

"Come," he ordered from the distance, "we go north."

* * *

Aeron tugged at the edge of his sleeve, embarrassed and awkward.

"You don't happen to have anything else to wear? Maybe? Possibly?"

Suzu, the daughter of the Mage, the woman who had risked her safety to help him, merely raised a dark eyebrow and pursed her lips, quite obviously displeased.

"Right. Sorry. That was rude."

She circled him, eyes drifting over him appraisingly. "It is best to work in traditional clothes. You are now a strange mixture of the old world and the new. You should embrace who you are. Confidence and assurance are a warrior's- a _mage's_," she corrected smartly, "best weapons. If you are faced with death you must know that you will survive on your own, by your own skills and powers. If you cannot count on that, why should anyone else? This is who you are, Mr. Michaels. And if you cannot wrap your head around this new idea, you might as well just understand that they are articles of clothing and are far easier to wear than nothing at all."

Aeron blinked down at her, feeling vaguely affronted. "I just don't normally dress in robes," he muttered, staring down at the black swathes of clothing wrapped around his lanky height.

Suzu shrugged, unconcerned, and turned away from him, crooking a finger over her shoulder, gesturing for him to follow her. He did, albeit slowly and uncomfortably. Whatever fabric his new attire was made of was quite itchy and between magic and an unhappy, disagreeable rash, Aeron was more likely to be preoccupied with the eruption of hives. Which, did not of course, bode well for what he was supposed to be doing.

Before him, Suzu was descending the wooden steps of her home, walking out into the rain. She brought them to a large clearing, not far from the place he had woken in, the small attachment to her home, the guest quarters.

She turned to face him, a dozen yards away.

"You have power Mr. Michaels. I want to see it."

Aeron started sharply. "I did tell you what happened the first and last time I attempted to use the power bequeathed to me didn't I?"

A faint smile fluttered over her lips. "Yes, I remember well. You shattered a dojo and nearly killed the woman that the world needs to see alive."

"Mmm. Yes."

"I am the daughter of a mage and a warrior. I may not possess the power that my father did, but where my strength fails my ingenious and understanding of our situation wins. I believe I am the only one who can help you. Sesshoumaru believes I am the only one who can help you. Do you think that he would have revealed this place, revealed me to the world, putting both he and I in terrible danger if it was not essential? You need to trust that I do not lie, that I can help you."

Aeron swallowed hard, feeling as if, quite suddenly, he was back in the fourth grade and Sister Mary Margaret was chastising him for forming his cursive letters improperly.

"Alright," he agreed meekly.

"Good," the woman said, her mouth breaking into a wide smile. "Now, show me what has been given to you."

The man grimaced and muttered, as the golden rings around his wrists began to hum and glow, "You asked for it."

The green lawn exploded with azure light and there, in the midst of a swirling column of blue fire, two shadows stood immobile, staring up into the heights of great power.

Everything burned sapphire and Aeron flinched away from the warmth of the sorcery flying before his eyes. A dull roar filled his ears, the cry of unrestrained power. Above him, a tunnel opened and closed, a yawning hole to the blue of the sky, pale in comparison to the roaring magic within and around him.

He should have, he realized fuzzily and dazedly, been afraid. He should have been worrying for his life. But he wasn't.

In fact, to his mute surprise, he was quite the opposite of fretful and anxious.

He was calm, at peace, comfortable- _protected_.

He was wrapped in a power that was not entirely his own, but was so close to his that it might as well have been. It was tainted with him and all the pure parts of his soul and echoed of nothing but hopes and the undiluted truth of Aeron Michaels.

Through the swirl of all that he was, a dark, lithe shadow appeared, parting the shinning blue glory with ease.

Suzu appeared, draped in azure light, the shades of midnight. In her dark eyes, the conflagration danced, and he thought he saw, against the tides of turning power, the flicker of a smile.

She radiated a gentle glow, like the sunrise, a red washed away to a subtle rosy sheen, diluted until it was passive and clement. It was like looking into the sea, like staring into the pearly glow of a morning, like coral, like the faint blush of a cheek.

Aeron was enraptured.

Her hand raised and he saw five tiny points of light, anchoring his own power, holding it steady. And then she casually flexed her fingers and the power he had unleashed grew, and receded, following her every bidding.

And then it was over, caught and snuffed out, but by who he was unsure.

They stood in the aftermath, watching each other, something large and jubilant building in between. It echoed out from his chest and wound up into his head and lanced through his thoughts until all he could see was the hopeful future and all he could grasp was one real thing:

Perhaps they had chosen right.

Suzu smiled and he couldn't help but return it.

* * *

It was raining again.

But he didn't mind.

He hadn't even noticed, really. He was far too concentrated on the power threading through his hands. His fingers curled and the power dimmed. As they extended, blue shadows stretched across the darkened floor.

Before him, deep in his mind's eye, she echoed and reverberated her pale color, tingeing the air with the slightest of movement, trailing color into the world with each breath she took.

Blue and coral mixed and swirled and danced with control and life.

She reined his magic in, swept it around his sorcery and kept it steady, showed him the channels and the ways of the world, allowed him room but always stood by.

With quickening control, he stopped the flow of magic and reveled in the empty feeling he was left with, knowing that at any time he chose, he could reach within and grab a tendril of his power.

He gazed down at his large square hands, wondering desperately, how he had come so far in so little time.

"You are doing well," A soft voice murmured near his shoulder.

Aeron looked down at the small woman and smiled.

"Thank you."

She laughed lightly and he felt his smile widen as he watched her eyes twinkle. "It is only the truth!"

"No," he said, words weighted, losing some of their good humor in favor of seriousness, "thank you for all you are doing- have done, for me. I know you can fob it off on saving the world, that you could say I am just another piece of the puzzle but that doesn't change the fact that I am grateful. I… do not, uh-" he stumbled over his words, tongue suddenly thick in his mouth, "I am not very eloquent and I do not find it easy to select the right words to express myself. I am very good at inadvertently insulting people. So for the sake of not offending you, I can only offer the simplest of appreciations. But, even with my inefficiency with words, I hope you understand, really and truly, how thankful I am… to you."

Below his nervous head, the woman blinked up at him, face blank, smile long gone from the mask she wore now. He shifted uncertainly, wondering if he had insulted her anyway, even with his carefully chosen words.

But in a moment's time, he was assured that she was not angry, because that pretty smile returned and there was something softer, much fonder in the way she looked up at him, something that seemed near to pride and even, dare he think to name it- gratitude, reflecting in her face.

"You are welcome," she said simply.

But like _his_ words, there were things in between. Things unsaid but caught, because he knew all too well, the need and importance of hiding behind the past, of hiding behind walls.

His were different than Suzu's. Much simpler and, he thought, much more selfish and contrived. Aeron's were of his own making.

And she was much more brave than he. But with each incremental movement forward, with each new, learned ability he felt a little lighter. Still dark, still very much himself, but he felt… capable.

And in any case, what he was doing was much more complicated and perilous than following his one true dream. If anything was certain it was that after his experience in Japan, with Kagome and Suzu and the two brothers he really did not wish to think about, he would be more than able to apply to school.

He decided that was progress, in a strange, satisfying way.

"Would you like to take a walk?" He asked Suzu suddenly.

"Alright."

He faltered. "You don't mind that it is raining?"

"If it bothers you then why did you ask?"

Aeron frowned. "It doesn't."

"It does not bother me either."

And outside the sun broke through the clouds.

* * *

The fireflies lit up the dark night, like bits of stars, fallen to the earth.

The couple strolled along a path of pebbles, neatly laid, twisting gently over the rolling green floor. The silence was so full and serene that the man could not help, even after the time he had spent behind the magical walls of the hideaway, but wonder how it was possible.

Beside him, the woman who yet remained a mystery to him, sighed with contentment, her face tipping up to the leaves of green trees above, sheltering them from the sky above.

With a slow intake of breath she spoke. "It was always nights like this that I missed my father."

Aeron cast her a sidelong glance, covertly and surreptitiously watching her.

"They always reminded me of him, you see." She nodded up to the sky, a smile flickering in her eyes, "The night looks black, but it is not. It is blue. It is alive and it is happy. That was very much like my father."

"He seemed to be a very good man."

"He was."

Beneath their feet the path shifted, and in the long grass insects buzzed, humming a summer song. Inside the long sleeves of his dark robes, his fingers twisted together, a complicated knot. He was afraid to ask the question perched on his lips, afraid but well aware that he needed to, had to ask.

"Will I be able to do this on my own?"

Suzu's light steps halted altogether and she turned to face him, half hidden in shadow.

"Eventually. But for now a little help is all you need."

Aeron's breath caught harshly in his chest and it was not until his brain demanded oxygen that he breathed in again, winded.

"Are you- are you coming with me?"

A dark, finely arched eyebrow raised and something hard glittered where warmth normally dwelt.

"These walls have served their purpose. My father and I were kept safe and apart and the greatest of magic now resides not with me, or the man who raised me and loved me, but with the man he intended to harness his power. I must leave now. And not," she said steadily, forcefully, "because your presence has endangered me. But because there is no more need to hide and because the one who needs to be protected is not me, but you. For now at least. When you can use this power," her small hands reached out and untangled his from within the swathes of cloth, fingers resting along the golden rings of her father, "you will have no more need of me, I am sure. You will be better able to face the future and that which my father intended you for. You will be safe from those that seek this power because you will be able to wield it."

The calloused fingertips stroking the gleaming rings brushed against the skin of his wrists. Where her skin touched his he felt a faint tingle, a tickle along the skin. Startled by the contact, the sudden and unbidden rise of worry and anxiety, he looked up from her drifting hands and into her face below his, concentrated on his large hands and the magic within.

"That," he said, louder than he intended to, "is not true at all."

Dark eyes traced upward and he saw the corner of her lips move in a familiar way, one that, with each passing day, he became more accustomed to. "What is untrue?"

He shook his head and could not stop his own twisted half smile from manifesting on his lips. "Your incredibly presumptuous statement, Sensei."

Suzu's eyes twinkled, sparked and ignited, flashing with mirth and hidden secrets.

"Which?"

"That I will have no need of you."

"Ah," she breathed and in an instant she had turned from him and was walking again.

Aeron stared at her retreating back, blinking rapidly, before he hurried after her, long legs bringing him to her in two long strides.

"Do you disagree?" He asked lightly, studiously studying the trees along their path.

"No," she answered quietly, "I do not."

"That's good," Aeron murmured.

And they walked onward into the night, clandestine smiles hidden from the other.

* * *

"Do not lose focus, Mr. Michaels! You're enemies will not be as kind as I."

Power throttled through the air, ripped it in two.

He bared his teeth as pain knifed through his head, searing white behind his eyes. In his cupped hands and between his curled fingertips orbs of blue gathered and grew, leeching the light from of the day.

His concentration remained steady and unyielding, and all but the azure sorcery gathering in his hands was lost to the backdrop of his mind, unimportant and insignificant.

Whipping, churning, burning sliding back and forward in his capable hands.

He was the magic, the power that had been given to him.

He was of it and in it and around it.

His hands parted and midnight poured out, struck, and split the world in two.

And in the aftermath, the daughter of the greatest sorcerer of the east, perhaps in the world- Aeron didn't know, not really- stood proud, of him perhaps, watching him with quiet, keen eyes.

"Well done," she said and Aeron couldn't help but think it was a bit of an understatement, considering he had once blown up an entire building, but he didn't say anything, because the praise she gave him was enough to tingle along his mind and flare before his eyes, burrowing down into his head, a memory forever kept.

"You really have come far."

Aeron grinned and ran a hand through his dark, tangled locks, sheepish and pleased.

"All thanks to you of course," he replied easily.

"Oh, no," she returned, sidling closer, "you did a little as well."

"Yes," he said, pleased, "I did, didn't I?"

"Yes," she agreed, taking his hand and leading him out into the sunshine, "You did."

* * *

Morning was breaking and the air was cool.

Mist rose from a small pond, hidden and shadowed, beneath the bowed limbs of ancient trees. They sat overlooking the garden, the doors flung wide to let the day in.

"You speak fondly of her, the Protector."

Aeron shifted, moving his leg before it fell asleep. "I do?" He asked vaguely. "I suppose I would. I am fond of her."

"You _were_ compelled to be near her. For years."

He shrugged easily and let his eyes rove over the high walls, almost hidden by the thick leaves and branches of the trees. "Yes, but I do not think it was entirely my choice. I liked her, certainly. I still do. She is very much…" he trailed off, struggling for the right word. "She is very much Kagome. And you're right," he continued quietly, "I am fond of her. I always will be. She is different now though, and finally, after those strange years of strange yearnings the pulls and wants are gone."

"Perhaps it is because you are with her?"

Aeron looked away from the orange glow on the eastern horizon, and down at the profile of the woman beside him. "Perhaps," he said slowly, staring at her, "but I think I yearned to be around her because we were meant to do this," he raised his hand to the day, as if to point out all that lay beyond the walls, their enemies, their adventures, their duty. "Because we were fated to. It was a separate part of me, the need to be around her. I think I was meant to watch over her, from afar, just in case all went wrong. I could be mistaken, but I can't shake the feeling that there was more to it than a simple need to befriend someone."

Suzu sighed and wrapped the thin blanket she clutched closer around her shoulders, but still she did not look at him. "Yes, it does seem to be much more. Fate is a tricky thing, I have found. It likes to play by its own rules and leave us wondering in its wake."

Aeron frowned and looked back to the sky.

"Are you troubled?" She asked him, and from the corner of his eye he saw her look up at him.

"Not really, not anymore." He fiddled with his glasses, shoving them further up his nose. "Things have become much more clear since you have helped me. I believe your assistance has transcended magical bounds."

"Is that a good thing?"

He cast a sidelong glance at her and offered a tiny half smile.

"Yes, it is a very good thing."

And on the horizon the sun rose high, dispelling long shadows and heavy thoughts.

* * *

"And why did you not do this thing that you wanted? Why did you not go back to school?"

"Truthfully?"

"Of course."

"I was afraid."

A laugh tinkered softly, like the bell she was named after. "Was it a formidable school? Did not many survive?"

It was his turn to chuckle, warm and deep. "No, though one would have thought it to be, by my cowardice."

"Mmm," she hummed, interestedly, her eyes narrowing in curiosity. "I wonder, though."

"What do you wonder?"

"Many things. But," she paused and touched her chin with a long calloused finger, "I wonder if you were simply not meant to do that, to go to school. Perhaps you were kept from it."

"Kept," he repeated slowly.

"Or perhaps you really are a coward."

"You often wound my pride when you are so honest."

Her laugh was louder then and her eyes flashed with amusement, "It is lucky I taught you to defend yourself, I think."

And in response magic rose and flowed and showers of azure and rose washed over the trees.

* * *

"I know of your father but not your mother. Tell me about her."

"She was beautiful. And deadly."

"I see. Two traits inherited by you no doubt," was the dry response.

"If you say." She paused and the wind swept sweetly overhead. "She was a good woman who was caught on the wrong side. It happened often in those days, those dark terrible times. She was found by elite warriors and was taken from her parents. They promised to take care of her and raise her to be a soldier. They told her family she was serving her country, her emperor. They lied.

"She grew up and they trained her and made her one of theirs. But she never truly believed in all they said because she was good and that was one thing they did not understand, goodness and purity. She was sent with her comrades to kill a man. A very wise and important man, a sorcerer of great prowess."

"Your father."

"My father. But she did not agree with the reasons they had for killing him. She did not believe them because she had never once been one for their cause. She had followed dutifully and had done terrible things, yes, but all the while, she knew, deep down, that she was not one of them. And finally she could do no more. She helped my father, saved him, and together they saved each other and disappeared from the world, and earned eternal enemies in the process."

"I see," he said slowly, carefully, "but that is all very sad."

"It is tragic in some ways."

"I want to know of your mother. You said she was beautiful. Tell me about that, then."

"She could speak many languages. It was her passion. She liked fighting with words rather than swords and deadly weapons and magic. She was very eloquent and intelligent. She never let my father get away with anything."

"And what was her name?"

"Her name?"

"Her name."

There was a long startled pause and when she spoke again it was with great reverence and stifled history.

"Sango. Her name was Sango."

* * *

"They will be coming soon."

"Time always runs short. It's inevitable."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Does the unknown no longer frighten you?"

Aeron sighed and cast troubled eyes into the dark night, sparkling above him. "It does still. But the unknown is everywhere. I have to face it. Sesshoumaru was right and you were right and Kagome was right. I am a coward and I am capable of this and I stayed because of a friend's faith in me. And now all that is left is possibility, because that is all we need."

"Then you are ready to face the world."

"I think it will be difficult enough to face so much evil. Maybe I can take on the entire world later."

"Alright. I was never fond of crowds. I can wait as well."

"Oh, good," he breathed, "because I was not lying, Suzu, when I said it."

"When you said what?"

He smiled and his face softened. "When I said I had need of you."

"I know. I might have need of you as well."

And through the shadows her fingers found his and threaded through and were a reassuring anchor to the unknown he had so feared. Because with her, the mysterious woman who had turned his perception on its end, he was found.

And that was enough for him, once alone and lonely.


	36. Broken

"Danger always strikes when everything seems fine."

-Kambei Shimada, _Seven Samurai_

**Chapter 36**

**Broken**

Kagome did not sleep well on the first night of summer.

As much as her sleeplessness was from her quiet heartache it was also due to the impressive and repeating memory of strong calloused fingers brushing across her face, reassuring her while simultaneously bewildering and perplexing her.

Through the entirety of her restless night she thought of him and the void that his actions left her in.

How silly she was to be so thrown by a simple gesture, one she so appreciated in a moment of hurt and remembrance.

But thrown she was. And she was circling above her own head, meticulously thumbing through every moment that they, the pale warrior and the clumsy museum assistant, had experienced together, and was left feeling very foolish when she found the end of the memories, lying there, befuddled in bed.

And because she got nowhere with those confusing thoughts, because they did nothing but make her grit her teeth and wish she really was asleep and away from her own brain, Kagome rose from bed, dressed, and left her bedroom, trailing a worried Ajax behind her.

The sun had not risen yet, but dawn was close, another day of waiting and hoping.

She slipped from the manor and out into the morning and walked with her thoughts, wishing they were anywhere but with her. She passed the remains of the dojo, a skeleton, a testament to the way things were once. Or perhaps, she mused, the way they were headed.

Shattered, uncontrolled.

Or maybe, she thought again, the dejected dojo was nothing but a piece of Sesshoumaru's home, once in the way of a wayward man, a mage's magic.

Yes, that seemed much less ominous and much easier to accept than anything else her overactive mind conjured.

She paused and looked back at the ruins once more before she disappeared into the trees, weaving through the shadows. She made her way, slowly, through the underbrush before she came to a break in the tree line, where faraway, on the distant horizon, the sun began to break.

She had seen many sunrises and sunsets since she had begun her journey. Each held a small and important sway over her heart. And as melodramatic and wistful as it made her feel, it was important that she remember them because each day was a new one, and with it brought the potential for something great and wondrous.

Or, her mind chimed in, something confusing and strange, something uncharted and unfamiliar.

And as if to prove her mind's point, the depth of the night parted in the wake of the pale warlord, appearing out of the trees and the shadows, revealing himself from inside his secrets and his past. He blended so smoothly into the lightening sky that he might have been one with it, might have always existed on that hill, watching her.

His golden eyes were far brighter than usual. They glowed with the morning and reminded her of fantastic tales from the books she read and adored as a child.

But they were not a fairytale and he was as real as she. Perhaps he was a little more removed. Perhaps he was untouchable by the sword and enemy's hand. Perhaps he was unattainable by mortal men. But for all his greatness he reminded her so thoroughly of a strong, struggling man, grappling out from under great burdens that she felt her heart twist and wrench.

And like it always was when she was with him, realization simmered and bloomed.

He was many things, but at that moment none of them mattered. Because like always he had come after her, had found her, and watched her and was, in his quiet way, keeping her safe.

They did not speak.

Not even as the golden orange glow of the sun swept over them and through his darkened forests. They remained, eyes held captive by the other, caught in a moment of understanding and uncertainty.

Hers was strained in the air, the hesitance and turmoil; caught in a gentle updraft of the early summer zephyr, cool in the morning light. And his, carefully guarded interest and concern, irresolute decisions, all fell dark and hard behind him, a shadow under a great and towering man.

And Kagome began to understand, really and truly, why he so feared humanity.

Because mortality brought pain and suffering and weakness.

And Kagome stood on the rise of a darkened hill, sunlight and morning above her, wondering, despairingly, why her heart ached dull in her chest.

Because she was weak.

Because she was flawed.

And she hated the truth more than she hated the vulnerability.

When the sun had risen, and was a perfect orb in the sky, Sesshoumaru spoke with measured words.

"It is no longer the first day of summer. Do you still wish to know that which I kept from you?"

Kagome felt herself smile sadly but the action was far removed from her head, was an impulse she did not and could not control.

"You'll tell me anyway, won't you? Because I need to know?"

He stood impassive, but feet away from her. His silence was the affirmation he could not speak.

"Then tell me."

He stared at her, hard, unrelenting, and in the intensity that he leveled her with she saw a wavering hesitance, a tiny, fractional part of him that did not wish to open his mouth and reveal the truth. But he spoke anyway, because he was a good man, even if he did not believe he was capable of kind acts, even if he did not believe the word fit himself. A good and true man, an honor bound being, a guardian demon.

"You know that the Mage was testing you, that I asked him to find out what you were?"

"Yes, I remember well."

The warrior king reached within a pocket and withdrew a hand, and in between his fingers she saw the crumpled piece of parchment, the black kanji, simple and nondescript. He reached across the distance between them and dropped the tattered and torn paper into her upturned hand.

With shaking fingertips, Kagome unfolded it, and laid the parchment flat in her palm. Her emerald eyes bore into it, as if she were waiting for some great enigma to bleed out from the ink and reveal the secret that slept inside of her, the Protector of a nameless sword.

"Therein lies what you are," he said, his voice floating somewhere near her ear.

"And what am I?" She asked quietly, hoarsely, fear creeping up on her and holding her in its midst, clenching her middle and slicing through her mind.

Above her shallow breath, above his steady ways, above the morning and above everything she had seen and endured, Kagome felt the world, the universe, draw in a slow breath, hovering near, listening in, waiting like she.

Sesshoumaru took a single step closer to her and she looked up and away from the ever important scrap of paper, burning in her hand.

His eyes traced down over her face and time stretched long in that morning moment.

And when he told her what she had longed to know since first she met him, she wished they could have stayed suspended in the seconds before the reality broke over her.

"You are the Shikon Jewel."

Kagome 's heart stuttered and she felt the impact of his words in the sway of her knees.

"How can I possibly-"

He stepped once more, closed more of the space between them, radiating cold, hard, steadfast certainty. "You asked me many questions phrased much like that one, about me, about you, about the sword, about the demon, about everything. You have already asked me 'how'. You know I do not have the answers, Kagome. Not all of them. I do not know _how_. But I know that it is true. Just as you do."

Kagome stepped back and the parchment fell from her fingers. She was glad a moment later, when the wind swept it across the forest floor, away from her and into shadowy places.

She only wished it would take her, too, allow her a moment to think.

"I don't know it. But if the Mage believed it to be true…"

"He did," Sesshoumaru cut in shortly.

She turned away from him and ran her hands over her face. "What does this mean?"

"That you are very important and essential."

"Besides that," she snapped, panic rising cold in her hands and legs, like needles in her middle. "I already knew that I was instrumental to the saving of the world. Don't coddle me. I have seen too much and I do not, _not_, after all this time and effort, wish to lose the respect and place I earned as the Protector of your sword. I may not do much, Sesshoumaru, but I will not be treated as a child. Not now. We are in far too deep for you to step back and play these games with me. You _owe_ me this. I have a right to know."

Even as her voice shook with restrained anger and passion she could feel the tumultuous emotions slip away in her sudden and desperate fear.

How could she _be_ an ancient jewel made for extreme and monumental power?

As much as she wished to forget the _how's_, she could not. And anyway, Sesshoumaru's authority of the subject was in question as she was vaguely certain he had never been assumed a living piece of an ancient artifact.

A hand fell onto her shoulder.

She loathed him then, every cool, intelligent ounce of him, so calm and capable behind her, a rock, certain and sure.

He was not always that way, and she knew it. But he was an excellent master and could disguise everything he felt and saw, could deflect thoughts and ideas, and even, at times, make her think one thing about him, even when it was untrue.

And Kagome was inclined to think that this was one of those moments, because she had seen in his eyes, his unseen and unspoken fear, so concealed that she wondered if she had imagined it all, there in his perceptive, stony gaze. But his hand was steady, his grip firm, rooting her to the spot as she threatened to lose everything she had gained since meeting him.

"It is another step. You have come this far and each time we meet a wall or a block in our path you look to the next sign. Why should this change anything? You are the Shikon Jewel. Do you know what you should do? Do you know what is required of you?" She shook her lowered head, stared at the ground beneath her feet. "How is this different than yesterday?"

She choked on a watery laugh and reached up to wipe away frustrated tears gathering on dark lashes. "Are you storing faith in destiny now, Sesshoumaru?"

"No. I never have and I do not think today will change that." His hand pulled her around to face him and she followed, reluctant, avoiding his eyes.

She felt weaker then, as those angry tears gathered in her eyes, than she had before, aching for something unknown and out of reach.

"What has changed, Kagome?" The man asked faintly, and in his words Kagome heard the things he would not say.

She looked up, warily, but without fear. Because she had not feared him, not once, not even as he had revealed the truth to her, over and over. He had never frightened her or harmed her, had always remained Sesshoumaru, untouchable and unbreakable.

She inhaled shakily and gathered back the fragments she had momentarily lost. "Nothing. Nothing has changed."

"No," he agreed, the hand on her arm falling away as she reclaimed herself, "Nothing has."

And in the gold of the morning, Kagome saw him smile, faint and true, and she thought, they were both liars, because they had changed everything, and themselves, too.

* * *

Sesshoumaru was very near cutting his own hand off.

Which was a shame.

It was a good hand. A _strong_ hand.

It did what it was told and handled weapons and clawed at things. It did all his writing. It tapped on the desk and other surfaces when he was bored. Without his hand he would be unbalanced.

Though, he knew from experience, not as unbalanced as without an arm. So there was an upside if he did, indeed, follow through with his urge.

But there was a problem, he decided, with the whole idea.

He did not _wish_ to cut off his hand.

Even as it plagued him and bothered him and tore at him and pitched him into an awfully sour mood, he could not deny that he was attached to it.

One was inclined to grow accustomed to body parts after so many years of living.

But there, right _there_- was another problem.

Because in all his years wandering the earth, of sitting, quite prettily above all the other warriors and humans, observing things and places and people as he pleased, he had never been so betrayed by a part of himself.

Of course, a little piece of his untamed and fiendish mind echoed devilishly, the very head that he waged war with was, or had been, prone to betrayal, too.

But that, he decided abruptly, was a different matter, and one that, upon consideration, would not be solved by cutting off his own head.

Frowning at himself, he looked away from the open palm in front of his face, clenched his fingers and dropped his fist to his side, resolutely turning his thoughts to other things, subjects that did not rile him to the point of potential physical harm.

And, luckily, one such subject stood before him, in the form of his brother, and the dark sword in his grasp.

With quick, golden eyes, he watched the movement of the sword, the thrust, the turn, the twist. He circled slowly, appraising, eyes narrowing, noting every mistake with casual interest.

Inuyasha studiously ignored him, which meant, really, that he was all the more aware of Sesshoumaru's presence and was trying his damndest to convince himself that he was not at all bothered by the overbearing existence of the warlord.

Sesshoumaru could have easily been distracted by the shortcomings of his brother, would have gladly spent an hour or two coldly smirking, watching as Inuyasha attempted to fix all that he did wrong. But just as he was beginning to enjoy himself, two new presences appeared at the doorway, effectively pitching his concentration off the edge of a cliff.

One hovered, leaning on the doorframe, and the other, the more rambunctious and rowdy and diabolically annoying of the two, ran into the room and immediately sat on Inuyasha's feet.

The younger Taisho brother stumbled and faltered and tossed his sword away to save himself and the unfortunate dog beneath him from impalement.

"Ahg!" He yelled, wildly waving his arms before plummeting to the floor.

A quiet laugh fell from Kagome's lips and Sesshoumaru's eyes flickered toward the woman, perched on the threshold of the dojo, a sword in one hand, pointed toward the floor, the other arm thrown casually against the doorframe.

She was there, well and whole, though maybe a bit subdued.

Yes, he thought, as he turned fully from Inuyasha's clumsy struggles on the floor, she seemed weighed down and troubled, darkened. It was not an enjoyable insight. In fact, he was beginning to wish he had not turned to face her at all, wished he had not met her eyes, wished she would stop walking toward him.

Her moods were infinitely distracting.

But there she was, approaching him, and with each step that brought her closer to him, he felt his reservation and worry and anxiety- regarding everything else but her- slip a little further away, like a shadow from the sun. She stopped before him, and on her face she wore her smile, like she always did now, or so it seemed of late.

Even with the loss of the Mage her smile had not left her, had dimmed a little, but had remained, and he remembered that once he had wanted to see it more, and now he did.

But this vague thought was brushed aside because there were more pressing matters to attend to, like the worry he saw in her vibrant eyes.

She was looking at Inuyasha, attempting to coax Ajax away from his legs where the corgi was inclined to lay upon, but he, Sesshoumaru was looking at her, and watching her from behind his reserve as he had always done.

"You are troubled."

Her eyes swept to him, and all enjoyment she expressed upon the sight of her dog tormenting his brother bled out and away, and he saw all that bothered her writ plain and clear on her face.

"Yes," she answered him, though a smile still hovered about her lips. "But I'm fine."

She spoke softly, but with a quiet conviction and so he stared at her a moment more, before nodding shortly and moving aside. Her eyes lingered on him a moment, and he saw the faintest trace of a frown cross her brow, the slight hint of puzzlement, and then she was turning her attention back to her dog, the beastly creature that it was.

She whistled and Ajax's ears perked and a moment later Inuyasha was freed. The dark haired man sat up and scowled after the waddling creature, wandering off to sniff the far corners of the great, ornate room.

Kagome grinned at Inuyasha, who did nothing but mutter foul oaths under his breath. When he had hoisted himself up and angrily brushed the lint off his clothes he beckoned the woman forward.

"Ready to spar?"

"Only too," she responded impishly.

She was given a wicked grin and the excited flash of amber eyes, the only warning before the man gingerly picked up his sword and flew toward her.

Sesshoumaru drifted back, away from their immediate presence. In moments they had forgotten him altogether, and so much the better as he could observe much easier from the eaves of concealment than from the forefront of visibility.

He circled them, slowly, watching each strike and miss, each hit and stab. He was not surprised by Kagome's progress. She was a quick learner, she had keen eyes, and when she was not prone to a bout of terrible clumsiness she was quick on her feet and lithe and agile.

But she was mostly clumsy, so that was not saying too very much.

But still, even with her lack of proper training, she was decent. She could defend herself well enough and while her time with the weapon was little, her ingenuity made up for much. There, standing back and away, Sesshoumaru was amused to see her nearly land a few slices on his brother, though each was parried with relative ease.

She stepped fast, concentrated well.

But it was not a dance.

He stepped back into their view, though they did not see him, or ignored him in favor of the compelling fight they were engaged in. His hand shot out, grasped her wrist, and Inuyasha faltered in the middle of a clean swing, pulled back and retracted his blow.

Startled, Kagome looked up at him, but his eyes were on her hand, her fingers.

"You must grip the blade more surely, or it will be pulled from you." His hand moved to hers, rearranged it, and tightened her hold. "This is your lifeline. You need it; you want it to work for you. You must consider that it is a mutual endeavor, the blade and your fight. The sword will cut for you, but first you must know how to cut. And first you must know you can. Hold it like this," his hand slipped away and so did he, back from within an invisible circle, an arena, "because when all else fails you will have but your hands and your weapon."

Kagome glanced at her fingers and back at his face, and deep within her eyes he saw the clouds and doubt lift, saw something of a different kind, plaguing her mind.

He wished then that they were on a rooftop with nothing but the sky above and the earth below. He wished they were back where there were no secrets in between. Because surely, if they had been there, or anywhere, alone- _together_- he would have slipped inside the walls she built, and found out what she meant by all those twisted tumbling emotions.

But they were not alone and even if they were he was not sure there were words enough to speak. Because sometimes even _he_ could not find them and he knew, perhaps better than she, that words often failed her, too.

So he faded backward and left her, standing blank and slack, and walked away, his hand burning, remembering the contact, her fingers on the blade. His fingers remembered another memory, too, the gentle trace and pattern of her face, the soft and careless moment, suspended forever in the past.

And as he swept out from the inner dojo, a place that prepared for war and evil, was seeped in violence of its own, he wished fully that he possessed the ability to remove his hand, remembering memories so.

But he was a selfish man and kept them, both his hand and the recollections.

* * *

Kagome was trapped.

It was dark and she could not see. Her eyes were open, she knew, but even as she reached in vain to grasp a door, a wall, she felt nothing but the urgent press of dark.

She was frightened, too, besides disoriented and lost.

And it was coming for her.

It was a ways off yet, but she knew her fate and it was closing in.

The earth screamed its sorrow beneath her feet. Outside the darkness she could hear the mournful wind.

She had to get out. She had a life to live. There were those who depended on her, who needed her to survive.

And even as she thought that, she felt her magic seeping away, bleeding from the land.

It was coming.

It was coming.

And she was trapped.

A light broke through the darkness and for a brief flash of time she thought she had made it, thought salvation was there. But then the crack widened and her vision was filled with crimson, and she was in pain, such terrible, horrible pain, and she was falling, and slipping, down a slope to lay, broken and battered, bleeding onto the verdant green of swaying grass.

The world dimmed and above her the perfect blue of the sky washed away into the white of the clouds. She sank into the ground, was pulled down and down, down toward something other, something grey and incomplete.

In a panic her eyes flew open, just as dark claws reached to hold her, to drag her further still.

She stared up at the ceiling, panting, her hand pressed to her chest.

Time, the air around her seemed to echo, was running out.

The Wood Spirit was failing. Her death was closing in on swift feet.

Kagome rose shakily, pressing her face into her hands, trying to block out the dream- No, that wasn't right- the _premonition_, from her mind.

It would not leave, it was blazed into her memory, searing with fresh hurt and pain. She ached from her body to her soul, wished that she were someone else, somewhere else.

She perched on the edge of the bed and she wrapped her arms around her frame. She squeezed her eyes shut and fell back into the vision, though this time she was awake and had no way to break free.

But that was not entirely true, for she knew he was coming, even through the mad illusions and frightening images slipping before her eyes. In a moment he was by her side, both hands on her shoulders, gently shaking her and pulling her from whatever thrall she was held in.

And then she was free.

She exhaled a shaky breath and nearly slumped off the bed, her strength sucked out from her, leeched and pulled away, as surely as she was pulled underground in her vision.

"We don't have long," she said weakly, barely aware of her own words. "_She_ doesn't have long."

"How long?"

"I don't know. I don't know." Her head ached and her mind was fuzzy, she could no longer see straight.

"Are we to leave now?"

Kagome stilled the tumbling thoughts in her head, looked up from the dizzying dance of her eyes and into his face, so steady before her.

"No," she said vaguely, and her gaze went far and distant, as if staring into the future. "No, not yet. We have to wait."

"You are sure."

Her eyes slid shut. "Yes. We wait. Only who knows what for."

"You should rest."

She cracked open an eye again and managed to smile. "Resting is how I arrived in such a state."

"I do not believe," Sesshoumaru drawled dryly, "that sleeping was the cause of the vision. I am sure you would have experienced it whether you were awake or asleep."

"That is most unfortunate," she said, carefully easing away from the edge of the bed to lie on her side, staring up at him from behind the covers she drew up to her face.

"Why?"

"If sleeping was the cause I would only have to stop that altogether, to rid myself from these nightmares."

"That is ill advised."

"Mm," she murmured, her eyes already heavy, "too bad. It seemed a good theory."

Dark crept ever closer, but it was safe and gentle, better with him there. As sleep reached up and cradled her she felt the gentlest pressure on her head, a hand, fingers threading through her hair.

"Have you forgotten your nightmares?" The voice murmured from above.

When she didn't answer he brushed the lock of hair form her face and left her, sleeping peacefully once more.

* * *

They meditated again.

Not because they had to- as Kagome seemed to have either mastered her control over her visions or they had found a way to seep into her mind without harming her or leaving her with as many lasting effects as before- but they meditated because they wanted to.

Sesshoumaru had not asked her, she had not requested, but they met each other on one of the paths, not a few days after her nightmares began and together they found a quiet spot and settled into even quieter patterns.

It was easy to concentrate when she was close, harder when she was away, even if it was in some part of the manor, or out running- much to Sesshoumaru's silent displeasure- with Inuyasha. The sword was bothersome when she was gone from his sight and out of reach, plucking and prodding at his subconscious. It was irksome, to have a constant reminder ringing in his head.

He did not need the weapon's constant power to instill the absolute need and importance of her. As he had been made aware on many occasions, she was essential for other reasons. Reasons he did not dwell on because it gave him a headache that built upon the magic of the calamitous sword, already thrumming around inside his skull.

So Sesshoumaru was content, or so he liked to think, to remain steadfast and resolute, removed and distant- but only just so. But it did not matter anyway. Kagome did such a wonderful job of ruining his carefully preserved displeasure.

She did not accomplish it in the ways she had once. She was still infinitely curious and clumsy and was very good at being surprising and amusing, but more often she was likely to break him out of quiet reserve with her equally quiet words, her musings and her thoughts.

But that, really, was nothing new, as she had done it first, there on top of the world. But it was different now, he knew, somehow.

Maybe, he decided one day, as he led her to a part of his home he had neglected to show her before, it was because he _knew_ her now. He knew her and knew how she thought and acted and knew what she wished and hoped and what frightened her and made her angry and-

And he was not bored or disinterested. He was in fact, increasingly more sure that he was right to like her from the beginning. And he was in fact, much to his own displeasure, quite proud of her and maybe even, maybe, maybe just a little admiring of her, too.

She was very different than the woman who had smacked into him in the middle of a corridor one rainy day so long ago. Different and yet…

He looked toward her and into bright eyes, dark eyebrows that rose in skeptical curiosity.

And yet she was very much the same, both brighter and younger and older than when first they met.

But that was well enough with him.

She was allowed to change. After all, he had, too.

Through an undisturbed corridor they walked, silent but comfortable in the wordless space, until they reached a pair of dark wooden doors at the end of a long corridor. Sesshoumaru stepped before her and pushed them back and open, allowed her to walk into the dimly lit inner sanctum. As she stepped inside he turned on the lights and before them the room appeared.

Kagome let out an inaudible gasp, her jaw falling as if unhinged.

"Oh," she breathed out, long and low.

Like she was walking through a dream she drifted in and around the pillars and the glass cases, each housing a piece of history, a piece of time, a part of the past.

The room was large and open and windows lined each of the three walls, facing his extensive land. In the golden afternoon sunlight they walked through the things he had collected and marveled at them alone together away, from the world.

The swords in their scabbards gleamed, the armor and the gear. The weapons, of all shapes, sizes, times, and places, displayed behind glass, preserved forever, caught her attention first. She wandered toward them and ghosted her fingers across the glass. He remained further away, examining tomes and manuscripts of ancient and forgotten times.

But not everything in the place of history was beautiful and artfully crafted.

Broken pots and ceramics were laid out with great care, preserved like the other valuable things. Pieces of rock, a broken wood piece, once of something of great import, an oar, worn and crusted by the sea, the broken blade of a poorly hewn sword, displayed as neatly as those full and whole.

On the other side of the room Kagome had halted before an impressive glass case, was enraptured with the contents inside. Slowly, Sesshoumaru made his way toward her. He stopped just behind her and peered over her shoulder at the glistening armor, so perfect and flawless that it might have been made that very day.

She was quiet a long time and he wondered what she was thinking, standing there before him.

"This is beautiful," she finally murmured, one of her hands reaching up to lay flat against the glass.

"There is a story behind it, if you would like to hear."

Kagome turned ever so slightly, the side of her face visible, her green eye catching his gaze, alight with curiosity.

"Tell me."

He stepped forward and to her side, removing his gaze from her face to the armor within.

"Pieces of it were once my father's. They were given to me when I inherited the land. They served me well, but had already seen many battles. It was necessary to repair them, to make them better than before. There were rumors of a great metal worker, a smithy, a sword maker, a forger with incredible skill and prowess. Some even said he possessed magic over the items he made. I sought him out. He created this." He gestured to the exquisite sight before them, proud and sharp and ancient.

"And that was how you met the man who forged the nameless sword now at your side," Kagome finished quietly, almost absently. She stared through the dim vision of her own reflection and into the bright refraction of light off the metal of war and violence, there, hewn before her.

"And that was how I met the Forger," he agreed, voice equally quiet.

"Was he a good man?"

Sesshoumaru's teeth flashed, and in the reflection of the glass he was something half wild and waning, something other and different, so far removed from the woman at his side.

"You forget, Kagome, words do not do justice to the things surrounding us. He was once a samurai. Some would have called him a murderer, others a hero. He was a ronin when his master died. He was a forger. He was a man lost to the world. He was a man found. He had a son. But was he good? Perhaps you know better than I, for I have no real answer to give you."

Kagome laughed then, surprising him. "I find it funny that you all, all of you men- Inuyasha, the Mage, Aeron, the Forger, even you, Sesshoumaru, are so convinced you are not good men. You have given up your lives and sacrificed families and lost loved ones and things cherished to save people and magic and things and ideas and…" She shook her head, brow furrowing, shadowing her eyes. He watched her reflection in the glass, her face blurry and hazy in his peripheral vision. "And you are good men, flaws or no."

"Why are you so convinced of this?"

She turned to him a puzzled look painted over her countenance. "How could I not be? Who would do all that? Good men. Honorable men. Who besides you?"

"You," he returned evenly.

Kagome blinked at him and her expression melted away into a blank stare. She looked up into his face, eyes drifting back and forth, trying to gauge him and see inside impenetrable walls.

"Why do all this? What have you ever gained?"

Her question dropped softly, fluttered and drifted, wove around him and through him and lodged itself behind his eyes, burrowing deep into his mind.

And unexpectedly, he saw everything, all of it, his entire life, expanding and contracting in his mind, narrowing down to a point.

He drew in a sharp breath, preparing to answer a question he had only ever asked himself once, when in his arms part of the past had died, had changed the world forever.

"What began as a means to protect my lands became a reason to save my homeland. To save my homeland I would have to save the world. Onigumo may have only ravaged Japan but he would have taken over each province, each weak piece he left torn and bloody."

He stared at her, through her; spoke as if he were not quite aware of himself, was lost in something old and infinite.

"And now?" She posed softly. "Why now, still? After all this time and all the blood and the never ending cycle?"

He snapped his gaze back on her, felt the kindling edges of dull annoyance and anger.

"Do you know anyone who would kill him? Do you know any other men or monsters or spirits or demons as powerful as I? Who do you think will do this, Kagome? If not me?"

Kagome watched him impassively, unbothered by the sudden edge in his voice.

"You could stand idly by. You'd be a much more powerful ally than enemy. You could take the world with him… or alone."

"I no longer require land for power. Nor do I need servitude as a supplement for authority. I learned what the demon did not. That humanity and life are not a waste."

"Because life is worth preserving… protecting," she said, a wry smile appearing on her lips. "Because you are _good_. Because you understand evil _and_ purity. Even as you understand the worst parts of the world and it rests inside you, it does not change you. You are the only one who truly understands."

She shook her head, a look of wonder crossing her face, and it seemed to him that she was marveling at him, like a specimen behind glass, like an object once thought lost.

"I am not the only one," he responded lightly, though the truth of his words was so real and raw he felt them sink and grow, expanding to the heights of the room. "I am not alone in this understanding."

"No," she murmured, the humor gone from her eyes, "I suppose you aren't."

"It is not all about good and evil, Kagome. I was not always the way you see me now. Do you think in the past, in the dark times of blood and war I was considered a good man, that I was a savior? Do you think any of us were? You would be mistaken to think it is as black and white as that."

Kagome stepped away from him, circled around the other side of the glass box, kept it in between them, that piece of the past, his armor, his father's gift.

"I have always known that about you, Sesshoumaru. I have always known that about myself. No one is perfect or flawless."

"You still misunderstand me," he said, watching her through the planes of glass, the sun reflecting strangely, creating white arcs of light, throwing rainbows across the pristine floor. "You wish to think of me as a good man. I am not. I am not a man nor am I good. I do this because I must, because there _are_ things worth protecting. But they do not belong to me and they never should."

Kagome smiled and he saw a wicked glint return to her eye. "Now who is seeing black and white? Why should they not belong to you, if you are wrong and other? Shouldn't they be part of you?" Her head cocked to the side and her hair swept off her shoulders, tumbled down her chest and back. Softly, she asked, "Aren't they already?"

For some unknown and vague reason, her question startled him, reminded him of all the weak moments and all the ways he had changed.

"What?" He demanded sharply, his voice jagged, angrier than he meant it to sound.

"Don't those things already belong to you? The things you protect?"

Sesshoumaru blinked at her through sunlight and history and he felt his mind and vision narrow to a point, focus on her, just out of his reach, standing there, throwing him off balance once again.

And he thought to himself, wearily, tiredly, they did. They did belong to him. In strange and indescribable ways they were of him, all the things he could not be.

They were his.

They were apart from him, but they were of him.

And wherever they were he would keep them there.

Even if they were just out of reach, separated by glass and things unseen.

He would keep them and safe would they stay.

Sesshoumaru watched her watching him and decided there was no black and white. Only grey.

And grey had a funny way of turning green, becoming a woman with midnight hair and fire in her veins.

"Yes," he answered her, finally, after an eternity of thought and confusion. "Yes, they are mine, those that I protect."

"Yes," she agreed, "they are."

And because there was no refuting the truth of it, because grey was everything and all that lay in between, they stepped out from behind the glass wall and left the history that had separated them. Because even as the past brought them to where they were, neither was able to remain, trapped inside a cage of what should have been, what would be, and what would never some to pass.

It seemed much easier then, to leave the room, to close and lock the door and remain in the present where they were real and true and-

Where they were the Protectors, grey and incomplete.

* * *

Inuyasha was having a difficult time concentrating.

It wasn't much of a surprise though.

It was, after all, quite easy to become stir crazy when all one occupied one's time with was swords and… waiting.

His life in Tokyo was beginning to look quite nice and eventful in comparison.

It wasn't that he didn't enjoy being in the middle of the quest. He liked it much better than being trapped in a huge, sprawling city. And it wasn't that he was tired of honing his skills. _That_ he could never tire of. It wasn't even that he was fed up with his companions. He was, to his credit, even beginning to become accustomed to Ajax's presence. He was, maybe, perhaps, if he dared to admit it, quite fond of the horrendous little creature. It did seem to have an aversion to both Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru. Though, unfortunately for him, the dog seemed more inclined to pester him than his older brother.

And Inuyasha was not bored with Kagome. He was actually very fond of her, too. She was entertaining and humorous. She was a good student and was always more than willing to work with him, to try out some new skill. And she provided him the opportunity to get away from that same part of himself, because together they would run the woods when the present pushed to sharply in on them.

And it wasn't that Inuyasha was upsetting or upset by his brother. That, too, was contrary. He was, near as he could remember, on the best terms with Sesshoumaru than he had been his entire life.

But unfortunately for Inuyasha none of those things counteracted time and the overabundance of it.

Because with time and a lack of things to do, he fell into the past and remembered everything he wished he couldn't.

On the mountain it had been easy to forget. There was far too much activity and magic and life to be so caught up in the past. He had given into the whims of recollection, but never had it dogged him so, than while he waited for the next step, there in Sesshoumaru's mansion.

It might have been the season, with its warm winds and blooming world that reminded him of her, the priestess, who would forever be in his heart and mind. He remembered the warmest months the best because they had always been so uneventful. It seemed ironic that events filled with nothing should be so burned in his mind, but Inuyasha's life had been so full of traumatic and horrendous times that he was not surprised to find his favorite memories were lazy and sated.

That was what life was like, those several years he spent, hiding away in the village by the river.

Lazy, sleepy.

It had always been quiet, and dreamy, that little town. War and famine and evil were so far removed from the little huts that they might not ever have existed. He forgot about such things not soon after he first met her.

She had caught his attention from the first moment he saw her, in the shadows of the simple temple. She had passed by the open door as he strolled down the dirt path, bored and perturbed. He caught sight of her, dressed in vibrant, brilliant vermillion, a splash of color against the dull light inside the holy place.

She had paused, perched on the edge of the doorway, her dark eyes glittering with veiled and disguised interest. He, all his harsh, boundless youth, struck dumb outside the door, staring up at her, unable to turn away.

But a second passed and she was gone, as if he held no appeal to her.

It had only taken him half a day before he had to go back and find her, learn her name, hear her speak, see those dark eyes again.

She was a quiet beauty, so different from his loud declarations and headstrong attitude. Around her he gentled, he softened his speech and his thoughts so he would miss none of hers.

And that was how he had always wanted to spend his life, curled up in that dim temple, glowing with faint candlelight, the aroma of incense burning from the corners.

But while he had drifted through a dream the wars and men and creatures he had left came looking for him and tore it all apart.

He remembered well, the day they came, the afternoon he told her to run, the moment he fled into the forest, hoping to draw the warriors and their magic and their malice away.

He remembered returning, broken and battered, alive but so weary and empty, stumbling up the path to see her, her, _her_-

To see her standing in the remains of her temple, all that was good and gracious and lovely about her stripped away. And in its place he saw death and destruction, hatred and fury. And she was no longer his, the priestess he had loved.

His enemies had ruined her, had taken what was right and perfect.

And he turned and ran again, his blood leaving a trail, a path she followed because she was bid to, ordered, forced.

And he remembered the time between the moment her saw her own death in her black eyes and the time they faced each other again.

She was a puppet, the last vestiges of her soul clinging to her body, pleading to him over the evil that had stolen away her spirit. He had begged his brother to spare her, to purge her of the evil, to save what was left of her, the good priestess she once was.

For perhaps the first time in Inuyasha's life, Sesshoumaru put down his sword for his brother's sake, and let him have the woman he loved.

She did not die when they stripped her of the evil magic possessing her body. Rather she was a shadow of herself, not alive, not dead, a phantom of what she had once been.

How he had wished she were nothing more than a thought, an idea, a memory. But she was caught between, tied to the world in more tangible ways than he cared to think of. And she remained, did not drift away, did not sink below, did not walk into the grey, misty gates of the after.

No, he remembered clearly, very vividly, the moment he stood, poised to watch her death, prepared to follow after her, simply to be with her.

But that time never came. She remained before his eyes, broken, a shattered piece of the former woman. And as he stared at her, that ghost, that thing, the being in the form of the priestess who had claimed his love, he felt the last part of his heart close, fold into itself and stitch shut.

He could not bear to look at her, for her half-life was more to bear than her death.

And for the third and final time he fled, and left Sesshoumaru to do with her what he willed.

If he had hoped for an easy way out, had hoped his brother would end it, he had been sorely mistaken because in the seconds, minutes, or hours after he fled, Sesshoumaru and the phantom had come to an agreement and she had drifted away into the misty woods, had vanished from his senses and his eyes.

If only she had given him back his heart, for everyday thereafter, she still wound a spell around it. _Still_, even after all the time, after all the wandering, she still held sway over him.

And he knew where she was now, because while he wandered she had, too, and eventually they had both stopped, had both settled in hiding on opposites sides of a country, had settled a sea and a shore away from one another.

And still they existed, under the same sky, just out of reach.

He knew where to find her because Sesshoumaru did, but he could no more bring himself to set foot in her domain than he could betray his honor, his promises, his companions.

So they were trapped, held apart and together by old, long forgotten magic. By old, never forgotten promises.

And Inuyasha was thinking- was _remembering_ all that painful history and bittersweet memory while he was trying to concentrate on-

Well, he didn't really remember what he was supposed to be concentrating on.

He blinked as a sharp ray of white sunshine drifted through the trees and lanced across his face, momentarily blinding him, startling all thoughts from his head. For a single second in time he remained frozen against the day, shadowed and illuminated, a curious mixture of both, caught between two worlds, two ways, two thoughts.

And in the time it took him to blink he had moved into the light, had broken out of the darkness weeping around his feet, was off and running down the hills and the dips and the swells of the land. He ran and he flew and he slipped through and over and under branches, stripped off his jacket and let the day run over his face, wiping him clear and clean.

So he ran from the past and tried to run from her, even as each footfall carried him a little closer to the elusive woman he had lost.

* * *

Kagome anxiously ran her hands over the sword on her knees. It had sustained more than a fair amount of damage since she had begun training with Inuyasha, and like a worried mother, she checked it over, searching for further damage, hoping that if there was any, it would still be useful, would serve her purpose.

Her fingers always found the notches and scratches that her keen eyes missed. Always a, without fail, after she checked her sword, she would find bleeding scratches upon her hands.

At that moment, as she recalled all the times she had cut her fingers on unseen edges, she found one, and hissed sharply as her skin tore. Glaring down at the sword she brought her finger to her lips and sealed her mouth against the very tiny, but irrationally painful injury.

The copper taste of her own blood hit her tongue and she forced herself not to cough in disgust. One of her least favorite things to experience was nosebleeds, as the taste never quite left the back of her throat, and now, with a bleeding finger in her mouth, she was willingly experiencing the same thing that nearly made her retch. An involuntary shudder worked its way down her spine and dragged shivers up her scalp.

She removed her finger and stared down at it, still steadily oozing red. Further vexed, she brought the digit back to her mouth again and as she did, as the taste of blood hit her tongue, as the overwhelming sensation invaded her nose and her mouth, her vision broke and blackened.

Suddenly she was whirling away as she had not done in a very long time, was falling through the sky and rocketing toward the green, undulating plain beneath her. But unlike all the other visions she had experienced, she did not slow. She did not feel the invisible tug of some great force coming to save her from the freefall.

She did not have time to scream before she hit, her mind was struggling to catch up with the scene before her eyes, and before she could blink, before she really knew what was happening to her, she hit the ground, and all the air left her.

She groaned in agony. A horrible breathless feeling clenched at her stomach, squeezed all the air from her lungs.

But something was wrong, was clawing at her soul.

She opened her eyes, rolled to her feet, clutched her arms to her stomach and looked up at the sky.

It was broken.

If she had possessed the breath she would have lost it, staring at the scene above her. Like a great pane of glass, the sky had cracked, and fissures and lines were threading through, were quaking and waiting to plummet.

Something dark and evil, a shadow fell at her back. Dull horror tore her away from the heavens and she turned and saw the world ending before her eyes.

Black shadows amassed and swirled, stretched as none ever could, moved and writhed like they were living creatures, the minions of the sallow woman, standing in their midst. She stared down Kagome with the blood red slits for eyes, grinned so cruelly, Kagome was sure there was no soul behind the mask of stretched skin. Sharp teeth glistened, were thirsting for blood, and there, lying at her feet, seeped in shadow, was the body of the ancient wood spirit, dead.

Dead and decaying, enveloped by the darkness, licking away the skin from her bones, sucking away her magic, drying up the land as it leeched the sorcery from her body.

Kagome could feel the earth dying.

She trembled, and slowly, as if it were unsure and disbelieving of what was happening to it, the land began to cry, began to scream and wail. And the sounds echoed high and clear in her head, burst behind her eyes. She screamed, too, overcome with the chaos and insanity. Sinking to her knees she wept, rocked back and forth and prayed for death, for anything that would take away the agony.

And then it was all over and there was nothing.

Nothing but the pair of golden eyes staring down into her own.

She could feel the cold tears sliding down her face, drifting over her chin and down her throat. Her breath was thunder in her ears. Her heart was an earthquake in the cage of her ribs.

And epiphany and fate was thick in the still air.

"Is it time?" Her Protector asked her.

"It's time," she whispered back.

And they swept away on the tide of the storm, collected the remains of those who would save and sacrifice, and went to the gate, and stood before it, staring at destiny.

* * *

The town was bathed in sunshine, but all the rural folk were indoors, watching as the dark figures walked five abreast down the dirt road, their shadows falling long and dark behind them.

They passed each house, each home, each broken fence post, and not once did their eyes stray past their destination.

The spirit gate, the torii, leading to the valley below.

They passed the darkened temple, and one of their number paused, hesitated as if to go inside, but was stopped by another, was pulled back toward the path.

They did not speak, but it seemed they had no need to. Each wore the same expression of dark determination, of quiet fury. They stopped just before the gate, looked up at the dying vine, the withered white flowers.

They were lit by the sun, so bright and unaffected by the dark, invisible clouds of the day. Like giant pillars of themselves they stood, rooted like statues, immovable as mountains.

All went silent but still they stood, and it seemed to the villagers hiding in their homes, cowering from fear of something horrible and something long forgotten, that they were of another time that they were of stories and history. That they were warriors come to bring a new age, to change the earth.

And then the moment moved on, a cloud passed over the sun and their was nothing on the path, was nothing at the entrance to the valley but the dust and the dirt and the skeleton gate, looming high and tall above them all.

* * *

_It might take me longer than a week to update. You know, tests in every class and such. Thanks for reading. _


	37. The World Breaks

_To start with, thanks so much for those of you who nominated the story for IYFG second quarter Author universe. The story won third! Ha. I didn't even know about IYFG so it was a wonderful surprise in the middle of a horrendous week. I'd just like to thank everyone who reads and reviews. So long as you don't quit on me, this story won't. I'll keep it going as long as you are around. So, thanks to both ffnetters and single sparkers and to the people who nominated my story. _

_Second- I just do not have the time to churn out 10,000 words a week. Updates will probably be coming every two weeks. At least for this semester. I wish I could spend all my time writing, but it isn't possible. I'm sorry!_

* * *

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**Chapter 37**

**The World Breaks**

Kagura waited at the bottom of the rocky incline, stared up the narrow path and into the clouds swirling around the mountain. She could feel the fires deep inside the earth, the slow grind of molten rock, hear the echoing cracks as boulders shifted and waited to fall.

The mountain was like a great, sleeping beast, rumbling and murmuring deep and full. It was surrounded by dark and grey, and blazed of a hazy red, as if illuminated so brightly that it was a beacon, a fire so ancient it could never be extinguished.

She could feel the power of the demon, moving and shifting, his aura and his magic muffled by the distance and the incredible dense rock between them. But even from where she stood so far away she could feel his anger, the rolling fury coursing through the air. Suddenly he was moving from within the bowels of the mountain, was hurtling back down the narrow and rocky path he had disappeared onto hours ago. She stepped away; fearful of the violence and rage he spewed into the air.

Something had gone wrong. He would not be returning so quickly nor with such wrath if things had gone as planned. The demoness could not help the small spark of malicious joy this brought her, even though it interrupted her plans, practically derailed them entirely.

It did not matter though, because for a fleeting second she let the anger, the telltale ferocity wash over her. And basking in its glow she found satisfaction and delight.

He deserved it, whatever went wrong, and she would personally see to it that all his careful plans, all his sorcery and skill would be wasted.

He would curse her name forever, this she knew.

And she relished in the knowledge of it, the future that she would make.

He appeared out of smoke and fire and rock, and nothing was as great and terrible as he.

Her exhilaration fled, was snuffed out like a candle in a high wind. She cowered in his presence, quaked and shook for duty and for real and true terror, because even as she planned and plotted his undoing, she still feared him and what he could do to her.

His shadow passed over her and remained, blotted out what little light filtered through the heavy clouds and the smoke from the deep fires within the mountain, sucked the oxygen out of her lungs, and left her shaking, her mind whirling in numb shock, afraid to think, afraid he would know, would look at her and read her mind and see into it and-

Uncontrolled, his anger swept through her like a white-hot lance. She trembled, felt her knees threaten to give out below her.

"Get up."

Gingerly she straightened, but her eyes remained down, afraid of what she would see if she dared to level them at the creature before her.

"Look at your master," he commanded, the air shaking under the force of his order. Dark eyes drifted up from the burnt, scorched grass at her feet and into the pale anger, the vermillion eyes.

"We will go south, to the sea."

Kagura stared up at him, watched as the air around him began to hum and swirl with heat and electricity. Somewhere in the distance, storms were gathering and she could hear the rumble of the approaching weather, rippling along across the valley floor. And like the ominous maelstrom headed for her, hurtling toward her without pause, so did her words fall from her lips, dropping like the rain would to the dense and dark world.

"Why?" She asked him, because she wanted, _needed_, to know.

He paused in his gathering power, and all the shadows and dark glory behind him waited with bated breath as he turned back to her, murder and hatred swimming deep in his soulless eyes.

"Because, _pet_," he sneered at her, malice curling his lips, revealing fierce teeth in a bloodthirsty smile, "the man who can make me what I want has refused."

"Refused?" she murmured, as if she could not fathom anyone saying no to the vile beast before her. And she could not, even as she saw the truth in his pale face, writ in his furious eyes.

"Yes, Kagura, refused. And while there is no other who is his equal, there are still those who can give me what I want. We will go south and I will gain what I need, and I will be one step closer to defeating the good, kind, noble Sesshoumaru."

He turned on his heel, the black edges of his cloak snapping in the wailing wind. "Another fire, another forge, another forger. South, Kagura, if you please."

In a fog of confusion she reached within the folds of her kimono, drew forth the delicate fans from which she harnessed and managed her power, and whipped the world into a frenzy, pulled them far past the storm, and into the first stages of the end.

But an end for whom, she did not know.

* * *

The sun beat down unrelentingly, shone with harsh light, as if it knew what they were readying themselves to do, as if it were trying to stay up and awake for longer, to extend the day just for them. Shadows stretched long, were like the monsters that haunted their dreams and lived in their nightmares, the things that occupied reality that they all wished to forget.

There were no words spoken, and really, they had hardly acknowledged one another to begin with. They were the four and their new addition of one, standing on the threshold of the future.

For reasons unknown, Kagome was more frightened standing there in the valley than she had been staring into the face of the demon seeking them.

Perhaps it was the culmination of all that they did not know, hovering around the air above them. Or, maybe, it was the simple knowledge that they had to fight and survive, had to save another to finally gain the elusive information that had so easily slipped away from them time after time.

It almost seemed like a bad joke, that they had come so far, had fought enemies, had learned secrets, had found power they never knew, only to come against the one thing they could not pry open and beat out with their hands and their weapons.

Because although truth was intangible, it resided in something that was tangible, that could break, that could be killed and lost forever.

But none of that seemed to matter anymore because Kagome had long since forgotten why the Wood spirit was so important. She had to be saved, certainly, for her death would undoubtedly have greater ramifications than Kagome could ever fathom, but, still, apart from the vague knowledge that the spirit possessed vital information, Kagome was at a loss to see why they had gone so far only to trace back.

For a man who placed so little faith in fate, Sesshoumaru seemed to base much of the future on a being who claimed to know more than he. Kagome believed this be not only contrary but also morbidly ironic in the most unfunny of ways.

The dark green grasses swayed at her hips, but her mind was elsewhere, was wandering through the past, drudging up memories, trying and failing to put things in their place.

After climbing up a mountain, after wielding her own sword, after surviving the cataclysmic power of their enemies, after leaving the snow swept earth, after finding the new pieces, after blowing up buildings, after-

Her eyes faltered in their sweep of the sky and landed on the pale warlord walking before her.

After all of it, they were back. It seemed to be a reoccurring theme, like a play, like a movie.

But it was different now, walking below the sun and blue of the sky, slipping between the dark rise and fall of verdant green, because Kagome was the Shikon Jewel, and everything had changed.

It might have been her intuition, or perhaps the great power that supposedly rested within her, but she knew they were being watched, and as she had before, on other occasions, she felt the evil tainting the pure, seeping into the earth.

Kaede, the wood spirit, the kin of the forest was fading, and they were her only hope.

Kagome looked upward again, shielded her eyes from the rays of the sun. Would they survive this time? Would they live because of luck or fate or talent or power? Her hand fell to her side, abandoned the shield for her eyes. Her fingers curled around the sword hilt, cool and sharp, much more so than her mind, disconnected and confused.

And if they did win, what would come next, would all be revealed, would fate grant them what they wished to know?

Kagome was not sure she wanted to know more than she already did.

But then as desperation threatened to wash over her _he_ paused in his step and appeared at her side. He said nothing, but met her eyes and told her all she needed to know and hear without words and without thought.

And because he would always be there, it was enough, and Kagome and her companions rose over the hills and followed the paths they were fated to travel.

* * *

Sesshoumaru felt the wind change as the malevolent forces crawled their way up his spine. They were nearing the territory of the beast, the serpent trapping the spirit they sought.

He cast a circumspect glance to his right and saw his brother, dark and shadowed, Kagome, pensive and strong, brighter than she should have been, the little woman from across the world. A flick of the eyes and he was looking to his left, caught the accountant in his billowing robes, the glint of gold around his wrists, the daughter of a dead companion, walking next to the tall man. She was small, too, but her power was unmistakable, was tingeing the ground upon which she walked, was mingling with the unsteady, energy of the lanky man to her side.

Golden eyes turned forward and watched the parting grass; the vague ghost a smile curling stoic lips. He had walked in solitude for so long he had nearly forgotten what it was like to lead and to be followed, to reach for an undying cause.

It almost made him sick with sour humor, to think he had fallen so far from his kingdom, his lands, his birthright.

Almost sick and sour, but not quite.

A shadow of memory darted in front of his eyes, and for a moment he did not believe what he saw, either in his head or in reality, before him in the undulating plain.

But the tiny sliver of life, bright and long since dead, flashed, once, ran and dipped through the plain, wound its way under the rays of the sun and turned to look him in the eye, and dissipated before he could scrutinize, before he was sure of what he thought, of what he saw.

Yes, he was _almost_ disgusted with the loss of the warlord-

-Beside him, he felt green eyes turn capture them in their gaze-

Almost, but not quite.

* * *

Aeron was in a dream, surely.

Because if he was not in a dream, was not in some sort of reverie, it seemed implausible that he was on his way to fight an enemy, to use magic, to survive and save the world.

Somewhere outside his head and conscious mind his hands were shaking, and his breathing was irregular and shallow. But Aeron was so far inside his thoughts, his fears, his worries, that he barely noted the grass beneath his feet, or the heat from the slowly sinking sun.

Beside him, he felt the gentle lull of Suzu's magic and presence, radiating off her small frame, permeating the air and invading his senses, burrowing down deep inside his skull.

And that, he was sure, was the only reason he hadn't turned and ran back up the valley, had attempted to escape from the domineering and dark future.

As if his thoughts were as real as he, as if they were spelled out before him, as if _she knew_- Suzu slipped her hand over his, her small calloused fingers squeezing the broad expanse of his hand, reassuring him in the only way she could, that she was there, that he could not run, that there, really, unfortunately, was no time like the present.

All his time spent behind guarded walls was suddenly forgotten and seemed to him, on the edge of a meltdown, very wasteful, as he was going to fail everyone anyway.

No.

_No_. He would not run. He could not. He was needed. He was essential.

He could do this.

The coward he had once been, shrank and crawled away.

His dark eyes drifted to the hand clasped around his own.

_They_ could do it.

And they would.

* * *

Inuyasha could not take his eyes off the horizon.

Even as it dipped and swayed and he came closer and closer to the fixed point in the distance, he did not waver or falter.

He was fixated, was so far removed from the people next to him that they might not have existed at all. His face was a thundercloud; his mind was crystalline, narrowed to a hard, aching point.

He had no room for fear or doubt, no mind but for his sword, strapped to his back. His fingers tingled with the adrenaline, the anxiety, the excitement of the fight, the blood that would be shed.

The warrior's blood, the magic and sorcery of his kin awoke with each step he took, mingled with the humanity that occupied half his soul, surged against its magical imprisonment, and called out to him, begging to be released upon the world.

With the patience he had learned as a consequence his brother's demands, the forbearance he had earned at the hand's of a pupil, he reigned in his power, calmed it, and settled behind his own eyes, burning with quiet intensity.

The air seemed electrified, seemed aware of their duty and their quest. The world seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for the first blows to fall.

Maybe, though, he told himself, it was the waning strength of a wood goddess, dying as they made their way toward her. Maybe, just maybe he was already feeling the effects of her diminishing magic.

The thought sucked the air from his lungs, left him reeling.

She could not die. She was greater than he, greater than so many other creatures born of sorcery and ancient spells. To lose her would be the undoing…

The undoing of everything.

How he knew this, he could not say, other than the inexplicable knowledge that wound its way through his head, that if Kaede were to die, if they were to lose, were to falter and appear one second too late- all of it, whatever it was, fate, destiny, the earth itself- could and would unravel.

His pace quickened, and as if they, all five companions were afraid of the end, they began to ascend the hills, slide through the grass like the wind, parted it easily, made haste for the truth and the woman who claimed to know the future.

And Inuyasha kept his eyes on the horizon because fate lay at its end, in the burning gold of the waning sun, settling before him.

* * *

Suzu had always watched the world with bright eyes. Eyes, she believed, that were shaped like her mother's and sparkled like her father's. But for the first time in a very long time, she was seeing the world from the other side of her protective walls.

And it was beautiful.

This was what her father had died for. This was why he had hidden away from her. So that one day, she would be free to see it all again.

So that one day, she would be strong enough to avenge him, to help the friend's he had died for.

It was paradoxical that she could feel so much joy amidst such a dire situation. But even as Suzu was strong and capable like her mother, like her father even, she was still, through it all, able to see the good, the silver lining, the hope that shone through all the death and destruction.

Because even as they ascended hills and wandered valleys to save a woman of great power, a woman who knew of the future, the daughter of the Mage could not help but wonder: were they saving her for her knowledge, or saving her for the future?

Despite the harsh, unforgiving warrior king leading them, Suzu was inclined to believe his intentions were good, were noble, and were right. Because her father, although foolish in many ways would never have given up his life, his power, had he not believed in Sesshoumaru.

And so the man who had been called Miroku, who had been praised as a holy man more powerful than all, had died for them, the five, the flawed, mismatched, struggling five.

It made her heart ache, made her stomach clench with sorrow, to think of his goodness, to picture her family, all their bravery and their fortitude, their selfless acts. It made her despair; it made her proud, it sang to the warrior in her blood, the mage in her heart.

But all these things were secret, and were safe. She kept them well hidden because she _was_ a soldier, because she had a duty and a promise to keep.

So Suzu looked at the world and felt the thrill of living, the truth of justice and retribution, and looked down at her hand, linked to the man next to her. He needed her very much, to balance his loaned power, to realize his potential. But she needed him, too, to remind her of why she lived behind the walls. He held a piece of her father, the monk, the Mage, but everyday, every moment she looked at him, he was a little more himself, and a little less a borrowed man.

And that was the way, Suzu believed, it was always meant to be.

The large hand clasped in her own gave a gentle squeeze and she was sure, surer than anything, that it was not in vain that they hoped, that in the end, their destiny would be the one to win, to avenge, to set right what had been wronged.

And as Suzu looked toward the horizon, for the first time in a long time, she saw life, the reason to fight, to succeed, and to hope.

* * *

Everything was a mad haze of pain and confusion. She had long since lost her connection with that outside her prison, and the loss had crippled her, had thrown her into a despairing insanity. She was fading, was losing her power to beasts outside her reach.

But still, still she clung to a possible future, a destiny that she had foreseen, that might yet, even as her breathing became shallow and irregular, that might yet save her.

Her vision faded to grey, to black, and then to nothing at all, and she felt the call of the earth, beckoning her back into its arms. And life was dimming, was fading out, and all was empty, for the goddess of the eastern earth, the dying spirit, the ending life.

Outside her existence, the monster prowled, rejoiced in her failing strength.

And on the horizon, stepping into the circle of the evil, the nefarious magic, the future broke and became the present.

And five approached over the horizon, shadows under the sun.

* * *

Kagome's keen eyes searched the long grasses for signs of an enemy. Like an elusive dream the taint and stench of the foul demoness skirted her senses, danced just outside her perception. They were nearing the edge of the territory and when they crossed over it, there would be no telling what could happen.

All hell would probably break loose, but that was something she had come to understand long ago.

But Kagome was ready even if chaos threatened, had prepared herself each step of the way for the moment she would break free, would run and would do everything in her limited power to save, to heal, to fix that which had been broken. She was not entirely confident of her abilities, was quite sure she possessed none that would remedy the seriousness of the situation. But Sesshoumaru, it seemed, though differently.

Either that or he had become increasingly clever and ingenious in thinking of ways to keep her out of harm's way.

Kagome was not about to argue with him though. It seemed that somewhere inside, something agreed with his decision to keep her out of battle. She was not meant to use her sword. No, not on this day. She was to be with the woman who had sent them forth, the woman who spoke of the possible destines and the secrets they held.

Beneath her feet the hills were beginning to roll upwards in harsher inclines and soon she was struggling against the slope of the land. She remembered the way the earth had changed, the closer they came to the tiny hut, alone in the unbroken plain. Long before she realized how close they were to their destination a cold sweat had broken out across her brow and her heart had long since lodged itself in her throat. But those things, the shaking of her fingers, the nervous shift of her eyes, were far detached from her mind. She was so focused on her task that she almost lost herself in her own thoughts.

A hand reached out and grasped her forearm, hauled her up the last few steps of the steep hill. Kagome glanced up and into Inuyasha's face, grey with worry, hard and consistent, his eyes burning fire and determination. She offered him a weak, tiny smile, all that she could muster in that moment when it felt like the threads of her life were going to tear and rip apart.

On the verge of saying something, he stared down at her, frozen.

Maybe he was afraid of the future, too. Maybe he was fearful of destiny and what it meant to them, what they meant to it. Perhaps he was afraid he would be a little too late, a little too slow, a little wrong in all the ways he couldn't afford to be.

Maybe he was like Kagome, and was frightened of war and pain.

Maybe he was the same.

His hand slipped away from her arm, but not before she felt the tiny, almost inconceivable squeeze of his fingers, assuring her and promising her many things and nothing, all at once.

And she looked at him, the half man, the half beast, and she wondered what it was like, to wait for each new fight, each new enemy in the hopes that it would bring retribution, that it would repair what had been lost.

And quite suddenly, Kagome found herself again, and the world sharpened and refocused.

Aeron stood facing west, the golden haze of the ending day shinning off the rims of his glasses, lightening his dark face, dispelling the clouds of worry and shadows normally found there, hidden behind his façade. His hand was on Suzu's shoulder, and the warrior mage stood near him, her face placid and serene, like she knew every secret of the world, and was only there to assist them in their own discovery.

She was beautiful, and her eyes sparkled like her father's. But underneath it all, Kagome could see the hard lines of a mercenary. Under truth and understanding a young woman still burned for revenge, and the same fire that often lit Inuyasha's eyes burned in hers.

Kagome turned her face to the wind, walked up the last few steps of the incline and allowed her eyes to fall on the man before her.

Sesshoumaru had risen to the top of the ridge, was standing in the summer wind, his hair and features haloed in the late afternoon sun. At his each hip a sword sat, gleamed with possibility. She wished she could capture him and keep him, each facet, each side of him.

He was so impossibly untouchable, especially there, standing before them all, a reluctant leader, a man who wished for nothing but his sword to strike true.

He turned, and she found herself the subject of equal scrutiny. A small smile appeared in that haunting eye, trained so steadily on her and Kagome was struck with a sudden thought.

Perhaps victory was not the only thing he wished for.

Perhaps he wanted other things, things neither seemed able to put into words.

But it was a silly thought, a fleeting moment that disappeared as soon as it floated through her head. After all, there were more important things to deal with than the sudden deep pang in her heart, the yearn for-

The yearn for something unimportant.

She stepped up beside him, and looked down into the valley, gently descending beneath them. Her eyes drifted over the tips of swaying grasses, and caught, far in the distance, the black splotch of dark, the hut, the prison, against distant hills.

"She lives yet," he murmured, his gaze fixed on the dark spot in the distance.

"Yes," Kagome answered, "but only just."

He nodded once and they fell silent. What _were_ they to say as they stood in the face of all they were waiting for?

For Sesshoumaru the possibilities of the future were heavier, were weighted, were darker and deeper. While they had all been affected by the death of the Mage, it was he, the cynical one, the one who claimed he had no need of fate but followed because he had no choice, that had the most to lose. It was Sesshoumaru who had devoted his life to ending the demon, to blighting the evil from the earth. And each time they were sent to chase another end, another piece of the puzzle, they lost time, he lost faith, and they both lost and gained something more.

And standing at the threshold of yet another destiny driven adventure, Kagome was not quite so sure fate always worked in their favor.

"It will be alright," she said, almost desperately, as if she were trying to convince herself more than him.

Sesshoumaru turned to her and stared down at her for long, silent moments.

And for the first time since she had known him, he truly lied to her.

"Yes," he said, his voice full of soft edges he should not have owned, "it will be."

She turned to look at him, caught in his words and his eyes and everything about and of him, the warrior king.

And they both knew he was lying, was twisting the truth of the world, was telling her that things were fair and right and good even when they weren't. But neither Kagome nor Sesshoumaru wished to correct the lie, because it was one they both wished was real.

The brief flicker of time passed and they turned away from one another, a hand snagged her own and she was pulled, as if weightless, onto Inuyasha's back. They disappeared down the rise of the hill, entered into the enemy territory and fell under the shadow of fate, destiny, and what could be.

* * *

Sesshoumaru slipped through the grass like the wind. Beneath him, the blades parted, the scrub of undergrowth shied away from the rolling force of his power, and the sky above him seemed to split in two. Like the arc of a blade he rose over the land, a blur, nothing but a vague swirl of white.

Beside and behind him, he felt the other four, could feel the surge and pull of Inuyasha's straining power, the calming patience of Suzu's sorcery, and the wide and powerful, great and indulgent power of Aeron, mingled with that of the former Mage, the Miroku.

As if they had stepped through a physical barrier of evil, the air around them changed, became charged and caustic. Magic pulled at his edges, attempted to tear through him and halt his progress, but he was stronger than the tainted evil of the demoness, holding the wood spirit captive.

Behind him, he felt his companions falter, stumble for a brief moment of time and then barrel through, breaking the tenuous hold of their enemy's magic to fall in step again. At the edges of his vision he saw darkness gather, whip and slide against the verdant grasses.

He waved his hand off to the northern slopes, gesturing to Aeron and Suzu, "Watch," he rumbled, dark and deep.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the slight woman and the lank man slow and distance themselves, a blue and rose glow seeping out from the two, their magic mingling and mixing, permeating the air, driving back the other powers, creating a protective hazy circle of light that moved with them as they ran.

To his other side, Inuyasha appeared, Kagome wrapped around his neck and back. His brother bent low to the ground, and in a breath was running ahead of Sesshoumaru, a trail of gold wafting into the air behind him, his power wafting upward and out, further intensifying the protection surrounding them.

On Inuyasha's back, Kagome turned, her sword at her side, her dark hair bound low on her neck, streaming in the air behind her. She locked gazes with Sesshoumaru and smiled, grinned as if she was not facing certain death.

And then she was gone in a blur as Inuyasha darted through the vegetation, pulling ahead as the serpentine forces descended upon them.

Sesshoumaru drew his father's sword and his feet carried him and his muscles moved him and his sword blazed, an extension of his power, of himself, flashed into the sun, warned all those who would oppose him of the power he carried.

All around him the waves of green began to move. But it was not the summer wind that swayed the grasses to and fro. No, it was what lay in them, the slithering of evil, the slide of nefarious creatures. He slowed his pace, held in a circle of his own magic and that of the two mages, somewhere just outside his range of sight, below a dip in the hills.

They were almost upon him, the dark creatures, were hidden by the long grasses waving about his legs. He stalled, slid to a stop, turned in the time it took to draw a breath, and his sword flashed, sliced through the snapping jaws of a dark, venomous creature, and ended it where it struck.

The sky was black with twisting shapes, appearing from the grass, from within the magic governing the land. Sesshoumaru swung the blade, twisted his arm, cut and cleaved, and obliterated the poor excuse for sorcery.

What an epic waste.

The serpentine demoness had captured the wood spirit, had sucked her dry for this? A pitiful display of her powers, these lifeless snakes, ripped and dead at his feet. An ugly sneer curled his lips and sour bile pooled in his stomach.

It was unfit; unthinkable that such great power had been leached, stolen for another's twisted bidding. If he had been motivated for other reasons to save the spirit, the sight of the sorcery beneath his feet was reason enough to continue.

Because the demoness, the snake, was just like Onigumo. Each sought power that was not their own, were twisted and corrupted by the magic they wished to wield. And each would sell themselves to death and all that it brought, if only to increase their power.

What an ugly truth it was, that they should exist with black hearts, their sole purpose to raze and destroy. What a paradox it seemed that Sesshoumaru, a man, a being just as guilty as they, a former warlord, a creature with blood on his hands and warped honor in his soul, should be the one to stop them.

Truly, fate was a twisted thing.

Around him the day began to whisper and he could feel the growing tide of power, better and stronger than the first wave of insignificant creatures, gathering in the distance. He could feel Kaede's magic, though it was twisted and belonged to another, laced within each blade of grass, each grain of dirt.

His face drew down against the glare of the sun and with calm assurance he reached for his second sword.

Down the valleys and dips in the rolling plains he saw light explode, midnight and morning mixed together, curling up like phantom fingers to the sky. He could feel the accountant and the mage's daughter run, their magic wafting off of them as they passed through the fields.

Ever the warrior, Sesshoumaru started forward again, parting the grass without a thought, his power like a shield around him, flattening the wild grass and cracking the earth with the pressure of his sorcery. His eyes glowed with the light of the sun, white light radiating about his hands and face. Power collected in the air around him, churned with an impossible wind.

The demoness approached over the horizon. He caught her in one golden eye, saw her shift and change, her pallid, stretched skin melting into scales, into teeth and jaws and black eyes of malcontent.

He smiled, felt the thrill of the fight course through him, dropped low and ran. His swords stretched out on either side, held aloft by strong arms. The blades cut across the top of the grass, and green strips of vegetation flew into the air, a blaze of color in his wake.

Up the incline the two mages appeared, falling in beside him, their power stretched ahead, mingling with the white of his, the golden trail of his brother.

The snake darted forth, its massive girth falling to the earth's floor with a shuddering quake. To his left he saw Aeron falter, the trembling shocks pitching him to the side. Suzu turned and in one swift move, reached around to her back and drew one of her weapons, a bo staff.

She moved, so fast that Sesshoumaru found it within himself to be impressed, and thrust the wooden staff through the air. Like a sword she swung it, aiming for a patch of dead air next to the recovering accountant. As if she had struck a wall, the air rippled and moved, filled with her magic, created a protective circle of light around the taller man.

Behind her, the grasses parted, and black magic parted and struck. Suzu ducked, disappeared into the grass, her magic erupting around her, slicing through the sorcery of her enemy. From deep within the tall blades of grass silver glistened and flew, the hidden shuriken darting past the demoness' magic.

She appeared again in a wash of pale rose, her katana flashing with striking light, cutting the magic in two. Like ripped paper, the black magic shredded and wafted away on the breeze. The woman sheathed her sword and fisted her hand, and the protective circle disappeared around Aeron. In half a second they exchanged glances and were off and running again, some fifty feet behind Sesshoumaru.

The warlord turned, his eyes searching for the other two individuals, far off in the distance.

Inuyasha was bent low to the ground, skirting through the grass, a blur of black. His sword was still at his hip and Kagome still clung to his back, safe from harm. Before him, the creature was closing in, was cutting off his line of sight. Black scales emerged and Inuyasha and Kagome disappeared from view.

With grim determination he slowed to a stop, sheathing Daichi-sama just as the jaws of the great beast appeared from the green. He raised his sword, cut across the space, did not flinch or falter as the massive head descended upon him.

There was nothing but the black of the scales, the depth of the eyes.

The earth rumbled and shuddered.

Inuyasha had reached the sealing stones.

Behind him, Aeron and Suzu faltered.

"Go!" He snarled at them, darting out of the path of glistening fangs. "Break the stones!"

They were gone in a breath and the great snake before him reared, attempted to follow them, to stop their desperate rescue.

Sesshoumaru lunged, his sword before him. With a deft twist of his hand he brought the blade down and through the side of the beast, wrenching savagely. The creature let loose a cry of rage and pain, one that vibrated through the air and shook the earth. With a twitch of muscle the massive body moved and Sesshoumaru vaulted forward, missing the swipe of the massive tail by scant inches. The ground shook again and even as he tried to maintain his balance, pitching precariously to one side, he stumbled. His hand reached out and with the barest brush of his fingers against the earth he was up again, following the broken trail left by the two sorcerers.

He sheathed the sword again and ran, his eyes trained on the line of stones, almost hidden from both his physical and magical sight. Behind him the air snapped and shattered, furious and static with unchecked power. He slipped through the waves of grass, melted in and out of the hills.

His companions had made it to the line of sealing stones and he could feel their power rise and swell like the tides of the oceans, beat mercilessly against a barrier, a shore, an anchor. His eyes narrowed, focused on the point of magic, throbbing through the air and into the sky.

Gold, midnight, and rose flew high to the heavens, merged, divided, brightened, flickered, threatened to snuff out completely, and then, in the span of a single moment the sky was alight with a magnificent purging white, the air broke into two halves and then shattered like glass upon them.

Great power, theirs and the enemy's, warred as the sealing stones struggled against the titanic force of two mage's and a half demon. The air around the valley became stifled and compressed, and all energy, all light from the day seemed to wink out, as each grain of power and sorcery moved toward a final culmination of power.

His breath labored in his lungs, white light danced across his eyes, and in his ears a deafening ring began to thunder, building slow from the farthest corners of the earth. For a moment he drifted off into the ether, forgot who he was, where he was, what he was doing.

There was nothing, only the potential for everything.

And in the white and nothingness the creature at his back swung into his existence, interrupted the flow of his thoughts, his soul, and ripped him out from the magic surrounding him.

He was thrown to the ground, rolled over his shoulder and disappeared into the grass, his power beginning to strain at the edges and push the bounds of his tight seated constraint. He waited in the shadows of the grass, whipping and dancing above his head. His golden eyes were as two lanterns, and from the depths of the shadows he seemed a creature of the night, waiting, biding his time as magic surged and soared overhead.

The great snake wound a tight circle around him, moving ever closer. He watched as his one path of escape was cut off by the giant, ebony tail, and in his alcove, his little tent of grass, Sesshoumaru waited. His hands poised above the two hilts of his swords, brushed against the cool metal, sparks of magic gathering at his calloused fingertips, threatening to engulf his hands.

Through the air the scream of power soared again, threatened to snap like a wire, a string. Hunkered down low, the beast, the demon, the man, the being, waited, breathing in the sorcery of the land, calming his throttling power, waiting, waiting, waiting.

A great pristine eye, blood red and filled with the depth of night passed by the parted grass, caught his own face in the iris, grinning wickedly, smiling without humor.

Teeth glistened, fangs snapped, and the world tumbled and turned in a blaze of white and gold light. The great length of the snake twisted, turned, a snapping head of jaws descending upon the pale king, standing straight and strong in the grass.

And Sesshoumaru disappeared under the rolling coil of black scales, as if he had been blighted from the very earth.

And encompassed in black, the white warrior was erased.

* * *

Kagome's fingers curled sharply into Inuyasha's shoulders, earning her an indignant hiss. Beneath them the sea of green continued to sway, sliding past in a verdant blur, a wash of emerald. Behind them they could feel the great snake move. It parted the air with its malicious magic, breathed caustic and putrid sorcery into the air.

Her hands, slick with sweat, threatened to slip off the man she clung so desperately to, and in her chest, against the wall of her ribs, her heart hammered, making her stomach drop out beneath her, hollowing her out.

"Hang on!" Inuyasha yelled to her, though she did not know why he felt the need to warn her. She was well aware of the problems she would face if she was stupid enough to slip off his back and into the endless rolling plain. She wound her arms tighter around him, and dared, as sharp fear pricked her along her arms and legs, her hands and in that thumping heart, to look behind her.

Far in the distance the great snake reared, dipped and slithered, like a streak of shadow and night, fangs and red eyes. Irrationally, Kagome feared for the white warrior, like she always did, stupidly and wastefully, when he met his enemies. But she didn't have time to worry for him, because time _always_ had a way of slipping from her, slivering through her fingers like sand.

Kagome turned away, squeezed her eyes shut against the sting of the wind, the great creature and the warrior, miniscule in comparison.

Ahead, the tiny hut loomed closer and with each shuddering and jarring footfall, Inuyasha brought them closer to the line of magic Sesshoumaru had once been unable to cross. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Aeron appear. Tall, lanky Aeron, swathed in black, and small, slight Suzu, luminescent with her magic, flying over and through the grass, nothing but trailing colors in the day.

They came up over a hill and Inuyasha faltered. He pitched sideways and she felt his nails dig into her skin, prick along her legs to draw bright blood. Beneath them the dirt was ripped from the underbrush and they coasted down the slope on a wave of loose dirt and rocks.

"Are you ready?" Inuyasha asked her, bending low to regain his balance, hitching her up high on his back.

Kagome could not find the words strong enough to shove her heart from her throat. But her answer did not matter because it was far too late to beg out and claim cowardice. They rose up the last incline, flew over the last few steps as if they had sprouted wings, had taken to the sky.

Inuyasha dropped one of her legs and his left hand curled back, gathering golden power that threaded and danced in his palm. They crested the hill, and as he threw himself forward he brought his hand out from his back, thrusting it forward with all his strength.

Kagome clung to him, her arms tightening as they fell forward, his extended hand bursting with wild gold light. The force of the sorcery hit the invisible wall stretched before them and in the moment before they were pulled apart, Kagome caught the barest glimpse of the plain jutting stones, sunk deep into the grass, radiating heat and light, at war with Inuyasha's magic.

Her arms were wrenched, twisted. She felt two powers rebel; throw her from her companion's back. Her elbow cracked, a searing pain tore through her head. She hit the ground so hard the air was forced from her lungs, knocked her momentarily unconscious.

In her ear the earth rumbled.

Get up.

Magic soared over her, was winding down through each grain of soil. The blades of grass touched her face, like tentative caresses, impatient but careful.

Get up.

Hot wind curled in her hair, plucked her dark locks of hair off her face, warned her, and whispered to her.

Get up.

Kagome opened her eyes to see blue and sunlight stretched high across the firmament above, the dome of the heavens. Her vision swam; her head was full of unimaginable pain.

_Get up. _

Kagome rolled to her knees, held her head in her uninjured hand, the other lay numb in her lap. Her eyes searched the plain, spotted the three shocks of color, held back by the stones, the barrier she had been thrown over.

Aeron met her gaze over his extended hands, enveloped in indigo and night. His eyes held the fear she felt. Inuyasha was off in the distance, his sword flashing, winking with sunlight. Kagome caught the flicker of movement, a lithe figure darting through the meadows. Suzu twinkled in and out of existence, appeared at one stone only to disappear in a flurry of rose and emerald, a flare of power accompanying each appearance.

Kagome's hazy, sluggish eyes circled back to Aeron, and although the distance between them was too great, the magic to overpowering, the moment too unsteady for him to speak, she knew what he would have said had she been standing next to him.

Get up.

She ripped her eyes away from him, even as the great snake rose over the horizon, even as Inuyasha turned and ran toward the impending threat, even as Suzu reached the last of the stones, even as her brain realized what her heart did not.

Even as she realized Sesshoumaru was nowhere in sight, she stood, stumbled through the heavy grasses, swallowed the nausea that accompanied the splitting throb of her head, and made her way to the hut, nestled in the slip and swell of the valley. Through a dream she staggered, toward the yawning hole that had beckoned her once before, toward the future, toward destiny.

At her back the magic of her companions- her friends- screamed through the air like an arrow from a bowstring. The world wailed truth, and Kagome ignored it all, because her path was before her, was swimming in and out of her consciousness, was playing like a mirage before her eyes.

Her hurting, confused head spouted thoughts, every whim of her mind shouted into the recesses of her soul.

Go, the earth beneath her feet seemed to say.

Run, the wind at her back whistled in her ear.

Fight, the tips of the grass wrote against her hands, tickled into her skin.

The creature was upon the warriors.

And Kagome was above her own head, watching everything.

She could see herself running over the broken trail, saw Aeron fall to his knees as the power the Mage had given him overtook his body and erupted through his dark eyes. Saw Suzu place a hand on his back, close her eyes and reach before her to fend off their enemy. Could see Inuyasha abandon the line of magic and rocket through the air, his face of fury and his eyes of determination.

Watched as the great beast swept through them, parted the three as if they were made of paper, slipped through its own defenses, came after her, and her alone.

And Kagome, soaring somewhere in the great blue sky, somewhere in her own head, ran on, held back the fear that was always constant, that never left her, and reached, fingers grasping, for the edge of that prison, dark and obsolete.

She swallowed the agony of death as she saw those great crimson eyes, those sharpened, evil jaws, open to snatch her from the world, to end everything she had worked for, had struggled for, had believed in and had-

Indigo erupted, filled the sky with its backlash, and all around her, in the protective circle that had been laid by the serpent demoness, the leaching soul, the stones cracked and broke, dissolved into the wind. Over the land two brothers rose and flew, and fate worked in her favor once more.

And Kagome, clumsy, silly, naïve Kagome- smart, strong, flawed Kagome, watched from somewhere outside her own eyes as Inuyasha dragged his sword through the great beast, as Sesshoumaru plunged his nameless sword into the earth, and saved her once more from the death clawing at her heels.

Through the hurtle of power, the strange confusion of that second, the woman slipped out of harm's reach and into the dark confines of a wooden prison, hundreds of years in the making, destiny like wings, the future like a sword, a glistening tapering point to an end.

* * *

Inuyasha had not been entirely sure what he was to expect when he met an invisible barrier that prevented magical beings from crossing over it.

He was not sure if the magic knew much about half-breeds. He hoped it didn't, because, in his opinion, it would be in everyone's best interest if he could pass through the magic with Kagome, could convey her across the border and to the spirit, holed and captured in her hut.

But the moment he descended the last hill, the very second his eyes spotted the stones and the magic in the air around them, he realized that, as always, nothing was ever as easy as he would have liked it to be. He was lucky he had the foresight to draw his power out, was glad he held enough sorcery to save them from a possible death.

There was no time to stop himself, she had to go forward and he had to stay.

With no real idea as to what he was doing, he threw his body, his mind, his power, his very soul, _forward_-

And felt each strand of himself rip, threaten to fall apart, to unthread and unwind into an eternity of nothing. But Kagome, ripped from his grip, had fallen, rolled, had been thrown over the magical obstruction, and was alive, on the other side.

He thought he would go mad with pain, if he waited a second longer, and with nothing but his determination and strength, he pulled himself back, collapsed away from the angry air, withdrew and fell, gasping, to the floor of the land. His dark eyes stared at his hand, seared and burnt, as if from a fire, shaking against the dirt.

Hissing with pain he reached and drew the rosary over his head. The pain was severe, but he had little choice. Drawing on that great power, in the state he was in was not only foolish, but dangerous. White appeared before his eyes, blinded him, reached deep within his soul and released the magic his father had given him, broke free of the shell his mother had bestowed.

He opened his eyes, stared up at the ceiling of the sky, so blue and pure, never-ending above him. He rolled over; laid for countless minutes, staring at the perfection, the calm he had once memorized, so long ago. At the border of his sharp vision, the tall blades of grass danced, and outside his head he could hear nothing but the gentle hush of the verdant vegetation as the summer wind swept clearly overhead.

He was snagged and caught in memory, of a time when he lay in different fields, with the dark haired priestess, when his heart had been warm and he had held it in his hands, had given it to a living soul. For a desperate instant, he wondered if all he had gone through would be worth the sacrifice at the end.

What if he just lay in the meadow and let himself drift away?

No fight would bring back the time, the moments, the woman he had lost.

What if he lay there until the sky fell upon him? Carried him home?

What if-

But she wouldn't want that would she?

And, really, neither did he. Even if in the end, even if after all of it, he didn't get what he wanted, even if he was left stripped and bare and empty, he could not simply fade away.

And maybe because he loved her too much once, maybe because he was more selfless than he cared to admit, Inuyasha rose from the grass and unsheathed his sword, stood dark and shadowed, the ghosts of the past hovering so close to the surface of his mind, he thought he saw them, standing there in the heat of the day.

Over the waving grass the extensions of the enemy moved, and in the distance the great snake began to exude its tainted power.

And alone he waited, a man with a heavy past, a heavy heart, and a duty to protect blighting all the darker images from his mind and soul, leaving him as nothing but the son of a great warrior, Inuyasha, the dog demon.

* * *

Aeron watched his magic gather in his hands, growing steadily brighter with each passing second. Suzu had reached the last of the stones, and as if he was in her head, as if he was sharing her skin with her, he felt her fingers brush across the enchanted guards, laying down curses of her own, binding each rock together, threading around the spells that kept the comrades out, that prevented them from rescuing the being within.

He felt the other mage tug at his magic, grab and latch on like he was a rope, a tether to the power that rested within. With a simple twist of need, she caught hold of his magic, guided it to where she needed it to be. Together, rose and indigo merged, seemed almost purple before his eyes. The woman appeared at his side again, rested her hand on his shoulder once more.

And without a word, she let go of the restraints from within.

Aeron felt the slow slide of great power, surging outward from his chest, tied to the sorcery within the woman next to him. As if she guided the magic with her hand, picked out the thoughts and words from his head, he began to speak, his fingers moving of their own accord. A spectator in his greatest moment, Aeron watched and waited as the air charged, became heavy with the combined power.

Under the great weight the stones began to rebel, hairline cracks appearing in their ancient faces. The magic leaked out of his fingers, streamed down his cheeks like tears.

It did not hurt. He felt no pain. But still he sank toward the ground, his very essence drifting away through the air, latching onto the protective spells, eating and corroding them, breaking down each part, gnawing them until they wavered, hung in the balance.

He was aware of the great sorcery all around them, and even through the melee he sought and found the magic of the wood spirit, the emerald strand of power, weak but steady. In his mind's eye he stretched and grasped it, pulled it close to his chest. Cradled in his hands it warmed, grew a little stronger with each moment it was away from the seeping, sordid power of the demoness.

A spark ignited behind the line of stones, some great memory remembered. The thread in his hands hesitated, paused on the precipice of greatness, and then, without warning, with blinding force, it exploded in his hands and he was thrown backward out of his mind to stare at the dirt beneath his hands. His breath escaped him in great shuddering gasps. His arms shook with the force to hold himself upright, and finally, when he could stand it no more, he collapsed to the ground.

Next to him, Suzu knelt, was whispering in his ear. Her voice was determined, carried hard edges and sharp points.

Weakly, he blinked, wishing the sun would do him a large favor and disappear from his aching eyesight. Suzu's voice echoed in his head, but her words were nothing more than sounds, tripping over and over in his mind. Over the intensity of her he felt his magic return from shattered stones, felt the emerald strand of power grow steadily larger and stronger, felt it release his sorcery and return to his body.

He breathed out, thanked the earth for the slow trickling knowledge, filtering into his head.

Kagome was alive.

The stones had been broken.

The Protector lived.

* * *

Sesshoumaru's sword rocked the earth and Aeron slipped back inside his own head, welcomed the darkness that claimed him, drifted away and left the warriors their work.

Sesshoumaru watched as the great snake curled upon itself, its great twisting mass blocking the sun from his eyes. His keen golden gaze was trained on the vibrant blue of the sky, watching as the demoness squeezed her body, cut off the world from him, trapped him within her own body.

He stood in the middle of the great circling mass, the darkness as thick as night and half as deep. He waited, poised, tense to defend himself. But for the moment he was content to wait, for each second the enemy spent with him was an opportunity for the other four to complete their task.

It seemed though, that the demoness was not willing to risk her captive, was unwilling to allow the other four a chance to break the magical barrier. The massive form moved and constricted, catching him tight. There was nowhere he could run to, he had gambled his opportunity, was left with the aftermath.

Her power, both the real and the stolen, laced through her skin and scales, vibrated through the air, danced painfully along his skin. Sesshoumaru dropped to his knee, waited as her crushing girth encircled him, threatened to strangle him with her power and sorcery. The creature moved quickly. It pulled and twisted, tried to snap him, suffocate him, kill him with sorcery.

He hung in the grip, within the magic, and waited. After all, each moment she spent with him was a moment against her. Foolish were the creatures, the beings, the warriors who believed themselves the most powerful.

He could taste her fear on the air. She gave a final squeeze, the necromancy arcing over him, burning through his vision, and painting him behind a veil of black. In a moment the vice was gone, as was the great serpent, slipping off through the undergrowth, speeding onward to her stones, the wall that kept her captive within and her enemies without.

Sesshoumaru breathed out once, allowed his fingers to stretch and catch his power, snap him free of the remnants of black sorcery. His long fingers dug into the earth, an anchor to the world. Pain warred with his determination, shifted back and forth in a dizzy display, a cacophony of confusion. A low growl reverberated deep in his chest. It was an anchoring point like the soil in his hands, held him in place and recollected the pieces overwhelmed.

Golden eyes looked up from the ground, echoed of dark anger and righteous power.

In a breath he was off across the land, sweeping through the air like a white golden dream, like the edges of the day. The shadows were miles behind them, and he ran with the end of the sun, the long tapering fingers of an orange globe, high in a darkening sky.

The world parted for him, bowed low under the quake of his power. In the distance he could see the straining power of the stones, the indigo and rose of the two mage's, he could feel Inuyasha's quick-handed sword swipes rippling through the air, and he could see Kagome's tiny form, stumbling through the heavy grass, and there, trailing along behind her- at her heels, so close it could reach out and snatch her away- was the beast.

Something dark and hard lodged itself in his chest, curled like rage behind his eyes.

Inuyasha was streaking along the side of the beast, his dark sword flashing. Sesshoumaru bore down the slopes, passed by the broken stones, reached with claws and teeth and sorcery and savagery, dragged his sword out from his side, reached high, arced it up and over his body and in one fell sweep, brought the weapon down into the earth, burying the metal half to the hilt.

His teeth bared as he forced his power through his hands, into the weapon and through the earth. A silent explosion rocked the ground, sent shockwaves in every direction, and ruptured the earth with such force that it bucked and heaved, became a literal rolling plain. Dust and grass flew high into the air, blown free of the earth, wafted up to the sky. Over the cracking earth he heard Inuyasha's fierce yell as he dragged his weapon through the great snake's side.

In the aftermath of the explosion, in the brief seconds he had to orient himself, he allowed his senses to expand, searching for the girl. The edges of his power touched faintly upon her aura, safe, for the moment, within the dark hut, still surrounded by enemy power.

Sesshoumaru allowed himself the barest hint of a smile before rising off the ground and weaving his way around the upturned slabs of earth. The giant devil writhed and thrashed between the jutted racks, black magic leaking into the air. Corrosive, violent hisses filled his ears and the twisting figure burst into black light. Left in its wake was the demoness.

She stared at him from within her slanted pupils, her wizardry rippling around her, distorting the air.

Rubble shifted in the distance and through the haze of mist fine dirt, his brother's shadow appeared, still gripping his weapon. To his right the haze parted, and the mage's daughter slipped into view, her eyes dark and hooded.

The creature before them smiled, revealing sharp fangs, a slithering tongue.

And then the three moved, brought war to the creature, the demon holding sway.

* * *

Aeron woke slowly, and was greeted by a ferocious headache. For a brief stint of time he was blissfully unaware of his surroundings and the better part of his day. But memory returned swiftly when the sounds of strife ripped through his head, bouncing around inside the pain behind his eyes. Groaning weakly, he pushed himself up off the ground and opened his eyes. One half of his glasses were cracked and splintered, the other missing.

The world was a dull wash of blended colors, hazy and indistinct. Aeron inhaled a shaky breath and his lungs immediately filled with dust and dirt. Coughing violently he held a sleeve up to his face and peered through his poor eyesight, attempting to distinguish his companions from the indistinct landscape.

His eyesight may have failed him but his magic and ears did not. They were somewhere in the distance, the sounds of weapons and throttling power screaming through the air. He stepped forward tentatively and his feet met broken ground. He stumbled through the uneven landscape, skirting the sounds of fighting, blind and confused.

Through the shattered glass of his spectacles he could just make out the broken and uneven ground, the darting shadows of his companions, moving through the air and across the land faster than his malfunctioning eyes could see.

Shifting rock and earth echoed out around him and he turned sharply. A shadow darted toward him, gripped his arm and swung him around. Suzu pulled him behind an upturned rock, shoved him back into a crevice. Her small hands reached up and removed his glasses. A moment later those same fingers slipped over his eyes, bled rose between his lashes.

When she removed her quick fingers he opened his eyes to a sharpened world.

"We cannot have you helpless," she murmured to him, a brief smile crossing her features before she turned and disappeared, her sword ringing clear as she drew it from her side.

Aeron watched her fade, his gut twisting sharply, the urge to follow her nearly overwhelming. But he was not a warrior. He was a mage. And he was needed elsewhere. He ran through the haze, climbed over the sharp lines of the earth. His magic told him where to go, his instincts pulled him forward. The sound of the skirmish echoed sharply above and around him. Dark shapes slithered near, snapped at the edges of his robes.

Ahead of him the shattered earth parted, the prison, the hut appeared from the dust, illuminated with the weakening rays of the sun.

Kagome was in there. He could feel her, both she and the wood spirit, still echoing of her remaining power.

He stumbled, glanced over his shoulder and watched as the dark magic of their adversary shot through the earthy dust, swarmed around him, whipped past him without pause. There was a shuddering moment and the sound of footsteps, an unintelligible cry.

Aeron could taste desperation in the air.

The enemy was losing, was bleeding, had almost lost the grip on her stolen power.

Aeron's dark eyes followed the curve of her magic, felt his breath catch sharply against his ribs, his heart throw high into his throat. From the side of the shattered pathway he saw Sesshoumaru emerge, Inuyasha drop down as if from the sky.

Their eyes were rooted on the last strain of power, the essence of the demoness, her crawling form but a shadow on the landscape.

He thought he heard someone cry out.

She stretched herself under and around the shack, stared at them with daring, fading eyes. Inuyasha was already running toward the tiny building, Sesshoumaru radiating white gold, his eyes filled with thunder and such violent fury that the air around him burned, the stalks of grass ignited under the pressure and heat.

Suzu was frozen, her hand upon a weapon, her eyes wide.

The snake demoness, the beast that had spent her life collecting the power of another, tainting and injuring the land, lost now, nearly dead, reached out and around their only lifeline, was prepared to drag them to the pits of hell, to take the wood spirit-

To take Kagome with her

And with the last remnants of her magic, the dark, tainted thing, the serpent unleashed her fury on the wooden hut, amidst the sea of green.

Aeron started forward too late, Sesshoumaru's sword missed by a hairsbreadth, and Inuyasha's hands fell short of the doorway, grasping at nothing but empty air.

Dark eyes glinted; spoke the words the demoness had never uttered.

Power was hers and hers alone.

And the selfish, evil being smiled, the pallor of death and glassy eyes rooting on her face, the serpentine features, and with a final hiss the air split and cracked, her power snapped the edges of the hut, curled up through the boards, lifted it, wound around and through it-

And exploded it into the light and the sun, the dust and the ending day.

Shattered into nothing, the place where Kagome and the wood spirit were.

In the deafening quiet of the aftermath, Aeron thought he heard the world break.


	38. The Gaurdian

_Methyl42, no offense taken. In fact, I quite agree, that last chapter was poorly written. Unfortuneatley, due to the nature of the story and where it is headed, I can't avoid multiple character views, but I will try and make them as clear as possible. They are relevant, I promise. Hopefully, this chapter and the ones following it you (collective you) will like better/ more. I revised three chapters (following this one), so they **will **be better, I promise! Sorry if you didn't like the last chapter. Admittedly, it was pretty sucky writing. But! Stick through this one, it is very important to the next movement of the story! More action is coming and the plot will be picking up again as our heroes continue onward. Thanks for your reviews, I always appreciate them.  
_

* * *

Wake up empty head, ringing bells, you said, you heard her voice here  
An eastern wind on branches bare  
No moon, no stars, no passing time_  
- February,_ The Appleseed Cast  


**Chapter 38  
**

**The Gaurdian **

Kagome could only hear her heart, beating against the cage of her chest, thundering in her head. The summer wind snapped at her back and the force of the magic and the giant serpent behind her pushed her onward. She reached out, grasping desperately, fell through the dark hole once more, and came careening down onto the floor.

As soon as her shoulder hit the aged and splintered wood the pain ignited. Kagome ignored the fire across her neck and back, the rip of muscles, and rolled, shoving herself back into a far corner, wedging herself between the walls.

Outside the dilapidated hut she could hear the echoes of battle and the furious cry of the demoness. But she could see nothing past the deceptive wall of magic, echoing faintly from the doorway she had fallen through. The view from the doorway contradicted the noise around and outside the cabin. From her perspective, all was peaceful.

But she knew this was not true, because even as the waves of grass swayed gently in a fabricated wind, Kagome could feel the rise of power and hear the drawing of swords. It was faint and distant but real and true. Those sounds of strife served to clear her aching head and she rose shakily to her feet, spreading her hands along the grubby walls to gain better purchase.

Her eyes searched through the thick darkness for the wood spirit. The depth of the place was deceptive and Kagome was given the impression that she was not in a tiny hut, but on the edge of a great expanse, enveloped in dark. She reached tentative, shaking fingers behind her, felt along the wall. She rose slowly, and doing her level best to ignore the excruciating pain in her head; she began a treacherous walk toward the shadowy edges of the den.

She was only partially aware of the trickle of warm blood sliding down her temple and over the sensitive edges of her eyes, mingling with her dark lashes. A rustle of sound echoed from someplace, and the woman hesitated, reached a hand before her in the dark.

She held her breath as she waited for signs of life.

A pounding thud began to echo in her head, a testament of her injury. Her emerald eyes swam under a haze of pain, and the bright sunshine from the doorway flickered across her face, beckoned her to return to the world of light and sun. For a deliberating minute her gaze slipped from the shadows to the sun, and she considered turning back.

But Kagome was not a coward, and that was really all her faltering bravery needed to remember.

Tentatively, she turned back to the darkened corners, pushed away from the wall. She reached out once more, fingers straining blindly. With a faltering step she went forward, one after another.

Inside her head she was speaking, over and over again. Like an incantation to a god, a last chance, a prayer, she repeated the words. They became a mantra fueling her forward.

Please, she pleaded, _please_.

She could no longer see the stretch of sunlight upon the floor and walls. Ebony enveloped her, filled all of her senses, and blocked out the world. The place whispered of death and destruction, of lost hopes.

She could feel the edges of the walls, just out of reach. Blinking rapidly, trying to dispel the darkness creeping around her edges, Kagome knelt to the floor. Her hand crawled out before her into the furthest corner of the room. Her breath caught sharply as her words crept out of her head and onto her lips,

"Please, please, please, please-"

She was running out of time.

The sensitive pads of her fingers brushed across coarse fabric and drifted across a tired hand, cold, frigid, devoid of life. Her trembling fingers curled around the hand, squeezed it sharply, desperately. There was no sound or movement, no breath from the being swathed in dark.

Kagome felt herself teeter on a terrible precipice, looked into the eye of a storm.

"_Please_."

Nothing answered her but the sound of the wind, faint and far outside the prison. Kagome felt her resolve weaken, shatter, and disappear. Her head fell forward, touched down to the dirty floor. She squeezed her eyes shut against sharpening realization.

She had failed. She had lied. She had broken a promise she had made on a whim.

They were too late.

There was a great divide separating her, rifting her body from her soul. Some part of her was sobbing and wailing with grief, deep inside her battered heart. Calloused fingers tugged ineffectively on once living hands, begged them to move and rise from the floor.

The sharp sting of tears wrenched inside her head, and Kagome buried her face further into the floor, whispered over and over again, "Please, please, please."

They had climbed up a mountain. They had crested over snowdrifts and icy hills. They had shared secrets and shadows and pieces of the whole. Had grown and changed and allowed themselves to hope that fate knew its way. Had watched a companion fall. Had found his successor. Had found a daughter and a son of two protectors past. And Kagome had felt it would all be all right, if they could make it back and save the dying spirit.

Something inside of her shattered into a sharpened point.

"To hell with fate," her voice whispered harshly, bouncing around the place, echoing faintly before it sank into the walls and the floor, dim but strong, furious with truth.

She had not come this far to lose again. And what was more; she was tired of destiny, of blind faith and great, overarching power. She was The Protector, the Shikon Jewel. She was the key to saving the world.

But at that moment Kagome was nothing but herself, angry and vengeful, something she had not been in a very, very long time. And that anger burned deep in her gut, reminded her of darker times. Times when she was not supported and protected by the most mysterious of men. Times when she had no one and no one had her.

And she found and caught the truth, the reality of it all.

"He's right," She murmured, staring at the hand she gripped, "fate will make no man, and least of all me." Staggering breath caught her sharply, sawed off her words into staccato beats.

"Please."

The day fell quiet around her, softening at the edges, almost as if it were unsure what to make of her.

"Please."

Her voice had lost all its begging, frightful pleadings. It was sharp and hard, unbreakable and fierce.

"Please."

An uncompromising demand.

Outside the tiny confinement, the wind sang softly through the grass, the sounds of battle fading further into the distance.

"_Please_."

In her desperate fingers the hand closed around her own, and jade eyes opened wide as a figure rose from the floor, a rebirth from the ashes of tainted the most tainted evil.

And life began again.

* * *

The sea churned hard against the high cliffs. With each pounding wave, white foam and spray was tossed high into the air. A tempest rose on the southern wind, and far out over the sea, the sun sparked behind grey clouds full of purple lightning.

Something was happening in the northland. Its echoes could be felt even as she stood on the edge of a country. She held herself still, tried to grasp the rolling movement, to find out what it meant.

It was too far away for her to know, she decided, a moment later, when lightening cracked above and the sea began to swell.

Behind her, a cave opening yawned wide, bled darkness out into the world. She could smell the fires and the iron, the heated metals. Sparks of fire and heat flew through the darkness, danced along the walls of the cave. The pounding of a hammer against an anvil punctuated the deep rumble of thunder across the moving sea.

Kagura watched the stirring sky and the moving ocean, her eyes narrowing on the horizon where the sun began to set behind the dark clouds. At her back, over the sound of the metalworking, she could hear her master's voice, lilting, sweetened, and cunning with its deception and need.

Perhaps the storm and its threatening strength pushed her to turn and slip inside the cave. Perhaps it was the unnamed power thousands of miles away, just out of her reach and beyond her perception. Or, perhaps her own need to know drove her to defy orders. But either way it did not much matter because however she spun it, she still found herself creeping along the edges of the cave, slinking through the darkness, eyes bright and keen, ears perked and ready for secrets.

It did not take long to find the end of the winding path, and at the edges of the darkness, she tucked herself into the crevices of the wall, hiding from he bright, dancing light of the forges.

Onigumo was a cut out of the night, dark and staggering against the bright flames casting their light along the floor and the ceiling. His back was to her, and the frayed, jagged edges of his cloak fluttered in the heat and stifling air. In the midst of the forging blaze, a man bent and hammered a sword flat against an anvil.

"You understand what I am asking of you?"

The man's flinty gaze flickered to the demon, a wily, toothy grin appearing on sweat slicked skin. "Perfectly," his voice cracked and cackled, trembled with dark humor and emotionless mirth.

"And when can I expect it to be ready?"

The man paused in his work, laid the hammer down, and straightened as much as his bowed back would allow.

"Depends," he answered evenly.

The air became utterly still, vibrated with impatience. "On what does it depend?"

"Many things," the man stated vaguely, his eyes boring into Onigumo's face. "But one thing in particular."

The silence threatened to shatter, and the blacksmith grinned again, insanity and madness gleaming in aged eyes. There was something frightening about the emotions therein, something troubling and unsteady that reminded Kagura very much of the demon before her.

But where Onigumo was made for malice and power, the bowed, ancient mortal man was not, and appeared frail and powerless in comparison. But coupled with the madness in his eyes, the endless laugh caught in his throat, he was painted in a different light, was hysterical and crooked. _Wrong_.

"Many things, many things, demon. But there is one thing, just one, that determines it all."

"_What is it_?"

A sharpened, clawed hand snaked out, grasped the man by the throat, picked him up from the ground, murder his intent. Kagura's eyes widened as the blacksmith's darkened. The smile faded from his face, relocating to that perceptive, steady gaze, darkened by evil deeds and lifetimes of fury. And suddenly, she realized why he was so frightening. Why lunacy drew on his face and through his motions, through that silly, old man.

He was not afraid of the demon.

Kagura could only wonder what sort of man would not cower before such great evil, would not shudder under the malevolent stench, the sinister presence. Because, surely, a man who met a wicked minion, a creature that crawled from the bowels of the underworld, who matched his gaze without a blink, without hesitance, had seen- _had done_- many bad things of his own.

The thought sickened her.

Her existence was Onigumo. She lived in the world he created, was made to follow his will. It was only after he had broken her down, had neatly cracked open the place she had lived in that she was perceptive enough to see past the man who had once only radiated power, neither good nor bad.

And she was beginning to realize that good and bad were not as simple as they were portrayed. Because the man before her captivated and dismayed her more than Onigumo, standing in all his wicked splendor.

The man was speaking again, and Kagura resisted the urge to shy away from the two males, radiating great and terrible things.

"It all depends on you," the old man said, "On you."

A gnarled hand reached out to grasp the demon's perfect porcelain wrist. With a flick of the hand, Onigumo had tossed the man aside. The blacksmith stumbled and fell against distant shadows, his laugh accompanying his fall.

From the dark depths, his eyes flashed, reflected the embers of the fires.

"Depends on how much power you are willing to give up, how much faith you wish to store in your item. How much, demon? How much?"

Onigumo advanced on the man, his steps slow and deliberate. He halted and stared down at him, towered like the great and unstoppable thing that he was.

In his quiet answer, Kagura felt the future shake.

Outside the cave the storm thundered, the waves of the sea grew in height, and the sky let lose its tears to the emptying day.

"All," the beast said, his voice fading with the fires, "All of my power."

The forger's answer was nothing but a laugh, cold, hard, and mad with the past, insane with power and ancient sorcery. And Kagura faded away into dark and shadow; afraid of a mortal man and the damning words her master spoke.

* * *

When the lax fingers in her hand caught onto hers, Kagome jerked backwards in surprise, sucked in air so quickly it burned. But in a wavering second all her naïve hope was rooted firmly back in place. Because the woman's breath echoed once, twice, disturbed the dust on the floor, and oh, _oh_, Kagome could feel warmth return to dormant fingertips, could see the life return to vacant eyes.

And Keade, the great wood spirit, was lifting herself from the floor, was clutching Kagome for support, was on her own feet, with her own strength, her magic humming softly overhead.

Soft light fluttered from between the cracks of old wood, danced along the floor in mellow patterns. Kagome tore her eyes away from the indistinct grey shape of the kami and looked upward and saw, for the first time since she entered the prison, sunlight. Rays of sunshine drifted down like a favor from the heavens, a silly sign to a silly girl, all caught up in the good and righteous ways of the world.

The woman stumbled and Kagome reached for her, grabbed her in her hands and helped her stand steady. Relief flushed through her, leaving her arms and her legs weak and languid. In her head her thoughts ran free, and unbeknownst, a wide grin had plastered itself to her face.

"Ah," the spirit murmured tiredly, and through the dark, the sparkles of light through broken rafters, Kagome saw the woman smile, "it is you."

A laugh tangled with a sob, knotted high in her chest, and through her constricting airway she managed out, "Yes, yes, it's me."

"I did not know if you would come."

Kagome led the woman out of the darkness, backed away from the shadow, "I try to keep my promises. I don't think you needed to worry about if I was coming, only when. We seemed to have just made it."

"Aye," the spirit murmured, her illustrious eyes turning toward the doorway and the green outside, "only just."

Guilt plunged just below her heart, twisted sharply. "I'm sorry-"

"For what, child?" The voice was kind, much too lenient, nearly humorous.

Kagome shrugged, lost for words. "I don't know. Everything."

A soft laugh fell, whispered like the winds. "Your apologies are not necessary. I do not need or deserve them and we have not the time. Tell me. What has transpired since last you left here?"

Kagome blinked back astonishment, surprised by the sudden turn in conversation and the energy and life that the woman, who only moments before seemed near or already quite dead, exuded.

"We traveled to the mountains in search of the Mage, Sesshoumaru's one time companion. There he discovered what I am. The wind clan and Onigumo's demoness, Kagura, attacked us as we prepared to leave the monastery. The Mage had prepared for such a fight. He sacrificed himself and imbued much of his magic and soul into his weapons, the golden rings he wore about his wrists."

Kaede's gaze had gone distant, looked past her shoulder, as if she were watching the past, watching as Kagome spun the tale and all its tragedy. "He gave them to me, they led me to another man, someone I knew once. He could not control the magic; he was led to the Mage's daughter. She helped him learn the magic that was given to him. And then I had a vision; I knew we had to come to you.

"Sesshoumaru and our companions are here now. They are fighting the beast that held you captive. Aeron, the man given the Mage's weapons, he broke the stones."

"Yes," Kaede murmured, raising her hands before her eyes, a viridescent glow radiating from the very tips of her bent fingers, "he did." Her voice was heavy with quiet disbelief. She stood, stared enraptured with her own magic, curling up gently around her hands, twisting like the vines of a plant, blooming and growing, fanning upward toward the ceiling and the golden rays of sunshine.

"Breaking the stones will not free me," she said, her magic disappearing, taking the strange green light with it, plunging the hut back into its semi-darkness. "Too much of my magic has been stolen and warped. There is very little of my sorcery left that I can wield. I am not strong enough to break free. And even if I was… the demoness would kill me before I could escape."

"Oh," Kagome murmured, "it's a good thing then, that three of the five of us are warriors."

"Yes," Kaede agreed, her smile returning, gently lifting the corner of her lips, "that is a good thing." But she was distracted, was already narrowing her eyes on Kagome's face, thinking about something of great, terrible importance. "Tell me Protector," she intoned quietly, sharpening the moment with her measured words, "what is it that you are? That the Mage discovered?"

Kagome met the piercing gaze dancing across her countenance.

"I am the Shikon Jewel," she answered steadily, masking the panic that rose within her, upon uttering those simple words.

The look in the woman's eyes hardened, and perceptive eyes narrowed to glistening slits. "And you believe this, what the mage said?"

Kagome gave a noncommittal shrug of the shoulders, "Sesshoumaru believed him, and I believe Sesshoumaru. After all we have been through, I should not be surprised by such a revelation. Besides," Kagome amended quietly, "I remember the things you said to me. They seem to echo of the truth the Mage discovered. So, perhaps, I should be asking you that question, whether you believe it to be true."

Kagome watched the woman's face, studied each line of age, memorized the depth and the power housed within her frail form, and asked the question that had been haunting her, had wormed its way down into every part of her soul.

"_Am_ I the Shikon Jewel?"

The wood spirit drew in a deep breath and broke her gaze, turned to regard the world outside her door.

"What you are," she echoed softly and distantly, as if she wasn't all there. "You are the Protector of the blade, you are the woman who it sought, you are the catalyst of events you cannot see. You brought your Protector back to this place, erased lines and times around him, cast high the shadows of doubts. You are a reason to succeed." She glanced over a shoulder swathed in grey, "They fight more for you, Kagome, than they do for me. They believe in you and what you see and follow because they trust you, you and the pale warrior, the western King."

A troubled look settled over the spirit's face. "He said you are the jewel. Perhaps it _is_ the truth then."

Kagome's heart lurched and her breath hitched painfully, fell shallow in her chest. "You knew?"

Kaede heaved a heavy sigh, and though she seemed distracted, her eyes remained trained on the doorway, her interest divided between the young woman and her crumbling world.

"There is greater power than mine. I do not pretend to know all. I see fragments of what can and might be, of what will and will not. But I do not see _all_ things like this. Only those concerning me, my land, my power. Creatures and beings under my watchful eye. I saw you, had visions of you once. But as I said once, nothing can be known until the whole is completed."

"But the question remains," Kagome continued, undaunted. "I believe Sesshoumaru and I believed the Mage. But I need to know the truth. Did you know what I was? Did you see it when I fell into this hut the first time?" She paused, and asked the dreaded question once more. "Am I the Shikon Jewel?"

Kaede's eyes closed and a tired sigh left her lips, parted the winds and joined with them, whirled around the small space the stood in, escaped through the broken boards laced with an enemy's magic.

"The sword says you are its Protector and I do not refute its claim. The sword is the extension of the warrior, the man who saves, a man who chose his path, and could easily walk away. A Mage sacrificed himself for his companions and spoke truth before he died. My power recognized something in you, even before you stumbled into my prison, those months ago. You are familiar to me, Protector, you are more than a memory."

She turned and reached out a hand, dusted her fingertips across Kagome's cheek, stared into her eyes.

"You are like the spring, young one." And there was such a wistful adoration in the words that Kagome felt her chest tighten, her heart squeeze in painful understanding, "You are on the verge of something great, like the season at its beginning. There are so many secrets in spring, I find. Things we cannot speak of."

"But-"

"Not here." The spirit said sharply, her words firm and strong. The face lost its harsh lines and her hand fondly patted Kagome's cheek. "Not here. Time runs short. We will speak of those things later, when it is safe. When your friends have succeeded. But for now, be patient, and prepare."

Kagome frowned, trying to gather up the frayed edges of the woman's words, "Prepare for what?"

The spirit said nothing in return but rather turned and faced the doorway, the remains of her power glowing at her fingertips, bleeding from her eyes to drift to the floor. Jade pooled at Kagome's ankles, twined up her legs. She shivered under the contact, the cool breath, the ghosting green mist. It curled up and spread throughout the small confines of the space, invaded every crack and cranny.

Kagome's question lay in the air between them, forgotten. Time spun on uncounted and the spirit rested in silence, wrapped in her magic.

For a very long time, there was nothing but the vague echo of their breathing, filling the tiny prison. But as Kagome watched the sunlight move across the floor, waited with unraveling patience, vague sounds reached her, curled inside her ear.

Outside the hut Kagome could hear the muffled sounds of her comrades, the great magic of the enemy, whirling and winding around the hut. Without warning the ground shook, and she stumbled, throwing her hands out to break her fall.

The floor buckled as the ground swayed and she was thrust against a wall of the hut. Pressed against the splintering wood, Kagome glanced over her shoulder and back toward Kaede. The being's hands were open; fingers spread wide, palms turned toward the sky. Bright eyes opened and dark pupils were washed over with green. Kagome sucked in a sharp breath, opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the sudden wash of evil power, flowing over the hut.

Shadows passed over the sunlight, and for a brief second, all fell quiet. Her eyes darted up to the ceiling and down to the floor, where in between the swollen wood, darkness was seeping, oozing to meld with the fiery, pure power of the forest spirit.

"Prepare," the spirit finally answered, "for our enemy's final blow."

And then the world was torn apart.

A blinding flash ripped her vision from her eyes and the explosion of wood deafened her ears. She was tossed like a rag doll in a hurricane, and before her conscious mind slipped away from the overwhelming sensations, she thought she heard her name called, sharp and desperate, into the wind.

But it all happened too fast, and everything faded to black, and Kagome drifted away, lulled to sleep, away from the dying remnants of an evil taint, away from duty, expectations, and the future as it was.

And behind emerald eyes she found peace.

* * *

Inuyasha rolled to his feet, some twenty feet from where he had stood, stumbled upright and stared at the place the hut once been-

And felt his heart heave; his legs weaken at the sight.

There was nothing left but the obliterated crater, yawning wide and open, the place the Protector and the spirit had been.

The sky cleared, the wind blew cool and sweet, swept the battleground of the dust and earth. The four companions stood in the remains of the waving grasses and giant slabs of distorted earth, horrible silence thudding in the air.

It was Sesshoumaru who stared down into the pit, his back to the three.

But Inuyasha did not need see the bottom of the crevice to know the truth was on the air.

There was no whisper of her, no taste on the wind.

And when the great warrior did not move, the world seemed to flicker and fade, as hope quietly slipped from their fingers, left them ruined in its wake.

He started forward, staggered under the exhaustion from the fight, the desperation clutching at him, pushing him near some dangerous edge. Up the incline he tottered, weaving between broken fragments of earth and rock. His mouth had gone dry, his limbs numb.

He came to a clumsy stop at the edge of the crater, heart lurching as his slowly responding body leaned over the edge and looked down into the carved earth.

Dead, glassy eyes stared unblinkingly at the pure sky above. Over her body, magic hung, and like the whiffs of clouds above, it hovered, slowly purifying before drifting back onto the wind. Crimson blood mixed with sable soaked into the ground, a deadly wound across the chest was the testament to her death, the mark of her ultimate failure.

Weakness overcame him and his legs buckled under the strain. He sank to the crumbling edge of the gaping hole, unable to remove his eyes from the dead demoness, the power she had corrupted.

But for each second he stared, the truth sank further in. It was razor edged and bitter. It was slowly cutting him up, unraveling him in shreds. Long fingers dug into the earth, an anchor in a moment that threatened to overcome him.

He inhaled once, deeply, dragging in the smell of the grass, the freshly churned and turned soil, the heat on the wind. The pure sky above seemed to mock them, standing there, waiting for their missing piece to return.

Beside Inuyasha, Sesshoumaru was a statue of stone. The edges of his clothing shifted in the gentle wind, rose up and wafted around his frame.

His eyes were downcast. They stared a hole straight through the face of the loathsome creature. The utter absence of his anger, his fear, and fury drove the throttling emotion in Inuyasha's chest further down, clenched at his air, was in danger of covering him in darkness and shadow.

Movement on the other side of the hallow crater.

Amber eyes tore away from the ebony end, lying broken and twisted at the bottom.

Aeron and Suzu drew up short, teetered on the same edge. On of the man's arms was around the woman, supporting her weight, keeping her from walking on an injured leg. Their eyes did not meet his, not until they, too, had stared down into the fissure, had seen their fill of evil.

The former mathematician looked up first and in his eyes Inuyasha saw what rang in his chest. Suzu's quick eyes darted up from the pallid face and toward the swaying grass, hope still sparking and twinkling within her gaze.

But as the minutes stretched on and still Sesshoumaru did not move, still Inuyasha remained clutching the earth, still Aeron stood, pale and shaking, still Suzu clutched at him and still she bled, did he realize they could not walk away without acknowledging the fact, the truth, that Kagome was-

Sesshoumaru looked up, his head swiveling to the east, a slow, easy movement. From the corner of his distracted eye, Inuyasha saw him turn and part the grass, disappear over a knoll to fade into blue.

And the three were left to stare into the reality the warrior could not accept.

* * *

Sesshoumaru walked away from the others, followed a path his mind laid before him. At his waist the grasses swept, looked like the sea, the rolling calm. He did not pause or falter in his step, carried on as slowly as before.

The sun had crept its way to the horizon, was only just beginning to set, but still, high above in the pinnacle of the sky their was blue, darker than before, but still sterling and clean. The zephyr around him seemed sweeter, fluttering around his hard edges, dancing through his silver hair. A clawed hand reached out, drifted through the tips of the green grass, threaded gently across smooth lines and contours.

In the distance the mountains loomed, and dark patches of clouds lolled lazily, holding in their rain. A star or two could be seen on the dark side of the sky, in the east, the way he traveled. The sun at his back beat warm and calm, set orange and gold upon the world.

And still he carried on, did not think, did not stop. Propelled by some greater force he walked the swirling plain, left behind the ends of another road, picked up the trail of a new path. His sword was silent at his hip, more idle and content than he remembered it to be. It hummed gently as his swinging hand brushed its smooth, metal edges, reminding him that it was there.

It did not matter much, though, was of little consequence.

At that moment in time, nothing could have been more importance than where his feet were taking him.

The sun had all but disappeared, was nothing more than a glimmer against the mountains, night sweeping in with soft edges and comforting shadows, still bright with the ends of the day, when he came to that small hill.

It rose before him, steady and restrained, a lilt in the land. Small white flowers dotted this hillside and swept up beyond it, were feathered and sprinkled across the land beyond the point he stopped at. He looked down at soft petals, turned away from the sky and the absence of sun. He paused for a long moment, golden eyes planted firmly on the small, delicate thing.

Then he passed on, up the steady rise to the top, where the land leveled before beginning its steady onward roll. And at the crest of the rise, in the dusk and descending night, he stopped, finally, and breathed.

Overhead the arching sky steadily darkened and the rest of the stars appeared. It was a clear night, the clouds of the west dissipated into indistinct shapes, long lines of texture against the smooth velvet of dark.

He stayed framed against the hill and the mountains surrounding, under the darkened sky, pretty little flowers at his feet, a solitary man, a stoic stone, a warrior, a king without a kingdom.

He stayed steadfast.

The guardian, the Protector.

* * *

Behind her closed eyelids she could see sunlight. It colored her closed sight pink and disturbed her peaceful rest. Something was fluttering near her ear, whispering things she refused to interpret and understand.

"Sleep, little one, find me when you wake."

Kagome rolled over, pressed her back to the cool surface beneath her, drifted off once more, and forgot about everything, all the tired, weary things outside her eyes.

It was only when the brush of wind against her face carried a distinct chill that she stirred. She sighed once, and dragged in a breath, mind still fuzzy and incomplete. Logic was not yet awake and so she was content to lie, sampling the night air, listening to the whispers of the grasses, their gentle song.

It was the slow trickling of memory, lazy and building, that finally roused her from whatever place she had been.

Memory always seemed pleased to avoid her, when she woke. But the loss of history never lasted long, and soon she was remembering the flight across the plains, the brush with death, the explosion of the hut, her friends-

Aeron, Suzu, Inuyasha_-_

_ Sesshoumaru_-

Her eyes flew open and she stared up into a starry sky and golden eyes.

They were silent in each other's presence, almost reverent, as if speaking would be blasphemous, would mar whatever magic hung in the air.

He watched her passively, regarding her as if he found her everyday, lying on a grassy hill.

"Oh," she murmured into the night air, for lack of a better thing to say.

Her utterance did not break the spell around them, and he dared to move, was extending his hand to her. He pulled her upright, his calloused fingers and claws brushing over the sensitive skin of her palm. She straight and gazed around, curious eyes trailing over the bed of grass she had nestled in, the sprigs of flowers dotting the hillside.

"You were hurt," the deep voice said somewhere near her ear.

Startled, feeling hazy and confused, like a partially formed dream, Kagome turned to regard him, kneeling at her side. His fingers touched gingerly above her dark eyebrow, traced where an injury had stung.

Her own fingers reached up to touch the place. Vaguely, she recalled hitting her head on something sharp somewhere in between entering the valley and waking up in the field. The memory of thick, heavy blood trickling down into her eye fluttered around the edges of her wavering thoughts. But under her wandering fingers there was no injury, only sensitive, stretched skin, new and smooth.

Indeed, it felt like she had been tossed high in a maelstrom, but the aches and pains felt days old. Confused, she cast a cursory look at the warrior next to her. He did not, however, seem too bothered by her healed injuries, and seemed, instead, more preoccupied with their former existence.

Kagome's head was far too addled to argue much, or contend her perfect, although creaky health. Rather, she sat quietly, looking out over the land, allowing him the time he needed to tip her head one way and then the other, his fingers gracing skin, sweeping her face and search for injuries, his eyes wandering the rest of her.

When finally he had decided she was well and whole, he stood, tall and shadowed, strange and distant, more so than he had been in a very long time. Like fragments of a broken mirror, she recollected herself, basked in the quiet of the evening and the closeness of a trusted companion, the stoic being at her side.

Images splintered and spliced, threaded together to form a whole.

Bright eyes sparkled again, returned to their perceptive shade of green, sharpened as the remnants of ancient magic drifted off her.

"Is everyone well?"

"They are all in one piece."

"Well," she sighed out, drawing her knees up in her customary sitting posture, "that's quite good considering."

"Yes," he consented, "it is."

They watched the moon appear, a pale orb, bright and large in the sky. It seemed closer somehow, out in the open, than it did on top of the mountains. When the gentle glow had bathed everything in pale silver, illuminated the grass with bright shadows, light up the with incandescent light, he sat next to her, eyes fixed on a point in the distance.

Kagome regarded him warily from beneath lowered lashes. He was radiating something she had not felt before. He was somewhere else, far away, remote. And though he was always untouchable, there was an added element to his perfection on this night. He seemed to be working something very great and important over in his mind, as if coming to a climactic conclusion. Kagome knew him well enough to stay quiet in her own little corner of the world, not too far from his.

Time, which had been so fleeting and precious not hours earlier, seemed theirs to use or waste. But neither the woman nor the warlord seemed ready to move from the hill. So they sat in mutual silence, using up the time that had escaped them, time they claimed as their own.

It was a very long time before all the indefinable emotions left the man at her side, and he settled into something she recognized. When he turned to her she met his gaze and offered him a small smile.

She watched the flicker of emotion trace gently in his eyes, soften the hard lines of his jaw, and like always, she heard the words he had no reason to speak.

He was glad she lived. Relived, too, that he found her, safe from harm.

Kagome was pleased to see him as well, and her words were in her fingertips, suddenly laced around his own. The touch was quick, lasted not more than a moment, a breath, the gentle bat of an eyelash, and it was gone.

She couldn't stomach much more, her skin burned when it touched his.

His gaze flickered down to the place she touched him and then back to her face. Although all the nameless words and thoughts that set him apart from her had left there was still something dark and sharp to his golden gaze, the way he held himself.

But whether she was afraid to question it or he was adverse to acknowledge it, she was unsure. But, it seemed they weren't opposed to the silence, and so they sat, and watched the night fade into the glory of morning.

When the first rays of sun broke onto their faces, he reached down, pulled her to her feet and helped her down the rise. They walked in that same companionable silence, things unsaid illuminating the air between, a different kind of conflagration than the sun above them.

"It wasn't a waste you know," she finally settled for saying, looking determinedly away from him.

When he didn't respond she barreled on, because he needed to know.

"It wasn't a waste coming back for her. You were right; she does know things that we don't. And I think she'll be willing to tell us some of them. Which, really, is better than feeling around, blind in the dark."

"You know where she is then?"

"Oh, yes," Kagome answered, smiling slightly at the affronted look that passed across his handsome face, "she told me before she left, just after she saved me from the demoness."

He paused before he spoke; reached up to brush a lock of hair from her eyes, tuck it behind her ear.

"And where, Kagome, are we headed next?"

The young woman couldn't help the laugh that welled in her chest and burst through her careful self-restraint. She laughed until tears glistened in the corner of her eyes, because, oh, it felt good to be alive, to have made it through another test, another fated encounter.

It felt good to be here with him, even as it scared her senseless.

The moisture from her eyes slid down the contours of a cheek, and it was when he touched her face again, wiped away the streaks, that her laughter died. He was very close, much too near for an untouchable creature to be to a silly girl. But he was gentle, had been since those early days after they stopped pushing and pulling.

"Back to the beginning of course."

"Of course."

He took her hand and led her forward, into the day.

* * *

It was a very long time before the three remaining companions could pull themselves away from the fissure in the earth. Reality was almost too much to bear. Never mind that Kagome had been some all-important thing, some key to the future.

Aeron didn't give a damn about that. He had liked her and befriended her and cared for her long before she came back into his life, touting her warriors, her new ideals and thoughts, her new bravery and smiles.

She couldn't be gone. The very thought of life and the world without her was enough to drive him toward desperation. The truth stared him in the face, was a hole in the ground, and still he cold not accept it, would not imagine every moment after this one, missing a piece shaped for Kagome.

A horrible pain rooted in his chest and constricted his breath. Cold fear rose in heavy tides, closed down his mind until the only thing left was the aching future, the next few moments and how he would face them, cope with them.

Surely they hadn't come this far to lose her now, that tiny spark of fire, a dark haired woman and her bright eyes.

Beside him, Suzu was mute, and he could see the sorrow for her father, and the mourning of the Protector, written all over her grey, down turned face. Her hands had fallen limp at her sides, and although she had not known Kagome, Aeron knew she felt the overwhelming sense of loss, the gnawing hole.

Inuyasha had risen from the dirt and walked as if in a slumber, to the edge of the broken and cracked earth. The man stared off in the direction that Sesshoumaru had wandered, faced the wind. He kept his back turned resolutely away from the two mages, leaning on one another for support.

Aeron worked his throat, blinking rapidly against the harsh sunlight, the sting in his eyes. His words were cracked and broken, jagged and knifed.

"Is she- can you tell if-"

Inuyasha's back went rigid and he whirled to face the taller man. "Don't. _Don't ask me_."

Each word fell with sickening vehemence, dripped with fury and heart wrenching pain. The man stalked forward, radiating great, hardly controlled power. His eyes flashed deep and dark, were slanted toward crimson.

"What do you want me to say? You want me to tell you she's just over that hill? You want me to tell you I can sense her aura, just out of reach? You want me to lie to you and tell you I taste her on the wind, that I can hear her voice, that she's just out of sight?"

Inuyasha stopped just before the mage, trembled and shook, bared his teeth, frayed with helplessness.

"Is that what you want? Is that what you are asking of me?"

Aeron swallowed hard, turned away from the sorrowful wrath, the misplaced violence. "No," he managed to murmur darkly as he stared at the ground, the grains of sand and dirt beneath his feet. "That's not what I'm asking of you."

He could feel the amber gaze narrow, darken, and pin him to the spot, dangerous and wavering. And just as quickly as the wrath had built, it broke, and Inuyasha was moving away, a fractured, damaged man, clinging hopelessly to the way everything had been, only minutes before.

But Aeron did not judge him; because he could hardly bear to think about the truth, much less say it in words. Suzu moved away from him, radiated despair and despondency. He was unable to call out to her, to comfort her, because standing there, hovering on the edge of that vile sunken earth, he could not do even do that for himself.

Inuyasha disappeared over the hill, headed in the direction that Sesshoumaru had gone. The gentle swish of the grass followed the man's retreating back, faded into the sounds around, until there was nothing but silence, high and hollow, threading around his feet.

Overwhelmed, the man turned from the crater and ambled through the undergrowth, drifted until he found a flat stone upon which to sit. His legs almost collapsed out from underneath him, and belatedly he remembered that he was injured. Pain was very far away though, was minimal and insignificant in the face of what lay before him. And just as his body had gone numb, his mind had, too. He could hardly think around the block obstructing his memory, stopping the words from forming in his head.

How long he sat there, he could not say. Eventually Suzu returned and perched next to him, watched the sky fade, sat in a mutual silence, left him to his thoughts, existed inside her own head and heart. The moon above was luminescent, so close he thought that if he stood, he would be able to reach out and touch it. In the grass the night insects had begun their song, were oblivious to the two sorcerers' and their disbelief, illuminated by pale, silken moonlight.

Inuyasha returned late in the night, defeat and guilt weighing him down, shadowing him, ageing him by years. He dropped to the ground, crouched low, huddled into his body and deftly avoided the glances sent his way. His dark brow was drawn severely, his eyes focused on his hands, where, in the light of the orb overhead, dried blood could be seen, caked between the lines of his palms, under elongated fingernails.

"I lost his trail," he murmured suddenly, disbelief clouding his eyes, sounding out thick in his throat. "I don't know where he went. Maybe he went to look for her-" Inuyasha cut his utterance short, left it hanging at a broken point.

They passed the rest of the night in silence and somewhere during the quiet early morning hours, Aeron drifted off with his chin in his hands, and left his nightmares in reality.

He woke when light danced in his eyes and the sound of morning bird songs fluttered down from far above. He winced and groaned weakly, his head thundering with day old pain. The few moments after he woke were filled with nothing but mild confusion and sleepy, disjointed thoughts. He glanced to his left, where Suzu had dozed off and laid her face against his shoulder, consequently making his arm fall asleep, numbing it to the point of uselessness.

With the utmost care he reached out and lifted her head away from his arm, gingerly placed her on the flat stone he had rested upon. He stood slowly, unfolded his long limbs, his joints and bones cracking too much for a man of twenty-nine. Once on his feet her stretched high, reveled in the feel of a new day… until his eyes fell upon the earth beneath his feet, the cracks and breaks, the vast hole in the ground, and the overwhelming sense of loss left him weak and empty, powerless.

"Oh, god," he whispered brokenly.

It hadn't been a dream, a broken fragment from his subconscious. It had been very real and he was awake now, had to deal with this day and all that it held.

His mind quieted under the knowledge that he had been unable to stomach, unable to utter to himself the night before.

Kagome was gone.

He caved, reeled backward, swung away from the sign of her absence- and lost his breath as his eyes landed on movement, far in the distance.

Over the swaying verdant grass tips, the brush of sun against the morning, over his straining eyes and thumping heart he saw them, moving slowly along a nonexistent path.

The warrior led the way; his arm dragged just a little behind him, and clasped to its end was the ebony haired spitfire, the Protector of the sword, his friend.

He turned fully, could not find words to wake the others, but instead watched them approach, saw her smile from afar. Aeron could feel his mouth twisting in response, a grin lighting up his features. Unbidden, a laugh caught in his through, tripped out and rang loud and clear.

On the floor of the land, nestled in a bed of grass, Inuyasha jerked awake, his hand flying to his sword. He took one look at Aeron's daft grin and shot to his feet. Ember eyes widened and shock washed away all other emotions, leaving Inuyasha blank and incredulous, frozen in his place.

From the corner of his eye, Aeron saw Suzu stir. Without taking his eyes off the glorious sight before him, he extended his hand and helped her to her feet, drew upright and close, helped her off her injuries. She said nothing, but her shock resounded loudly in silent ripples and undulations. A hand and its fingers fluttered against his chest, rested warm against the coarse fabric of his robes.

All the tenseness and fear drifted away, settled far in the back of his head. He could give himself this moment, this stunning, indescribable moment, before her returned to the pressing insistence of their journey, before he returned to questioning and struggling.

Soon they were before them, the warrior and the woman he guarded. Inuyasha took a step forward, searched Kagome's face with increasing scrutiny. She looked up into his eyes, tired but whole, a smile playing with the corners of her mouth.

Inuyasha leaned close, and Aeron half expected him to break character and wrap the girl up in a bone crushing hug. It was not to be though, for a quick second later he had poked her in the ribs with an inquisitive finger, as if testing her solidity, her space in reality.

Kagome scowled and uttered a sharp, "Ow," punctuated by an unsteady breath of air and a deft smack across Inuyasha's extended hand.

The man withdrew quickly, rubbing his abused appendage, still staring at her in confusion, suspicion, and relief.

"Is that how you say good morning to everyone?" She asked shortly, removing her fingers from Sesshoumaru's in order to rub her side.

Inuyasha's customary scowl returned and he glared at her. "Only people I think are dead."

Kagome blanched. "You thought I was dead?"

The man raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "All the evidence pointed to it."

"But I'm not," she pointed out smartly. "Sesshoumaru found me easily enough. Seems a mighty conclusion to jump to. You could have saved yourselves a lot of trouble and worry."

Sesshoumaru stirred upon her words and cast a heavy glance at his brother, one the younger warrior either didn't see or chose to ignore altogether.

"Oh, right, I'll remember to think calmly and rationally next time every hint of you is wiped from the earth. Kagome, you're standing right in front of me and I can't sense you!"

Before an argument could break out between them, Sesshoumaru stepped forward and pinned his brother with an impressive glare.

"There is residual magic clinging to her. The Wood Kami hid her from magical sight and sense. Her aura is returning, albeit slowly."

Inuyasha frowned. "Oh."

"See?" Kagome snapped grumpily. Under her eyes Aeron saw dark circles, like she hadn't slept all night. "Not dead."

"Well!" He snapped back, as if it was an apt and appropriate argument.

But she wasn't listening to the perturbed man, was instead hugging him tightly, effectively cutting off his diatribe. The younger Taisho brother spluttered uselessly and his shoulders slumped in defeat. A dejected hand rose to pat her awkwardly on the back.

"Next time you're worried, just say so," she muffled into his chest.

Aeron watched, bemused, as the hard look in Inuyasha's eyes softened and melted into something heartbreakingly fond. When she disentangled herself, the man coughed gruffly and turned on his heel. He walked a few paces away and kept his back to the group, his fists pressed resolutely to his hips.

A small smile touched Aeron's lips, but was washed away a moment later when Suzu slipped back to allow Kagome a chance to hug her oldest friend. The man smiled in relief and wonder, glad she was safe and back where she belonged. Over the top of her head, he saw Sesshoumaru watching them, his eyes keen and bright with interest, and, although Aeron felt much safer around the warlord, he still untangled himself from the young woman… just in case.

Kagome stepped back and looked toward Suzu. Aeron nearly laughed aloud when he realized it. They were roughly the same height, and in their eyes there lay the same determined fire, though, admittedly, Suzu's was much calmer and wiser, better honed and applied than the wayward strength Kagome echoed.

It was strange, he decided, watching them watch each other, these two women drawn together by a common bond, a man who had lived and died for them. Suzu's dark eyes wandered over Kagome's face, and down to the necklace hanging around her throat.

Their flight to the spirit's side had been tumultuous and without speech. The two women had hardly had the opportunity to acknowledge one another, let alone speak. But even now, after the fight, they seemed content to stand in silence, unseen things passing between.

"You're father was a good man," Kagome said reverently. "I liked him very much. It was an honor to know him."

Suzu smiled gently and Aeron thought he saw welling tears sparkle in the morning sunlight. "He _was_ a good man. He liked you very much too, I know."

And then, as if they had known each other all their lives, they were embracing. Bemused, Aeron looked up at Sesshoumaru, who wore an expression not unlike his own, though better hidden, confined mostly to his eyes. In the soft caress of the wind, Aeron thought he heard Inuyasha snort, but he couldn't be sure.

When the two women released one another, Aeron spoke up, unable to contain his curiosity.

"What happened to you?"

Kagome's flashing eyes fixed on his face and she shrugged. "I'm not really sure. One minute everything was exploding and the next thing I knew, Sesshoumaru was standing over me."

"And the spirit? Did she survive? Does she live yet?" Suzu inquired softly.

A dozen feet away, Inuyasha's head swiveled and his eyes fell on Kagome. It seemed that around them, the world held its breath, waited on the brink as they studied her, waiting anxiously in mutual silence.

"She lives," Kagome announced and they each breathed a sigh, relief filtering down and through, eradicating the fear that had plagued them, had burrowed deep into each heart. "And she told me to come to her, when I returned to my companions."

"Where?"

Green eyes sparked, were full of the hope they only dared to dream about.

"Her tree. She's at her tree once more."

* * *

The trudging walk back to the spirit gate was an anti-climactic one, if it was anything at all. The sun beat down, hot on their necks, but it did not seem to ruin the mood of the others, though Sesshoumaru had no idea why not.

He was perfectly dark and perturbed, had no problem winding up that way.

Every few moments he would flick a surreptitious glance at Kagome, walking at his side.

It seemed, that for all he was convinced that they were safe, he could not convince his subconscious that _she_ was.

Out in the sunshine and perfect day his worst fears seemed to fall just short of tragic, but there had been no denying them, the day before, when the sun fell and she was gone, missing from the world.

He did not even approach the brink, did not and could not question what had happened to her, because to do so would have been dangerous. Something unnamed and wretched had risen up as he looked into that crater, devoid of the girl at his side. When his eyes, and nose, and magic could not reach out to her, he found himself standing inside an empty plain, lost somewhere inside his head.

Everything outside of him had fallen away, and inside, there was nothing, no thought, no emotion, no conscious effort. But underneath the space Sesshoumaru occupied in his mind, whisper thin cracks had formed and brewed and churned into an emotion he had never felt before.

But because he would not accept any other outcome other than her life, well and whole, he had staved off that great and terrible force slowly engulfing him, swallowing him whole.

To breathe in the air and not taste her on it had been a bitter agony. In the part of his mind that was not so stubborn as the rest of him, he knew he had panicked, had felt to utterly wretched and wrong that he threatened to do great and terrible things.

This revelation should have spoke volumes to him, as he walked through and parted the grass, walked with no real purpose other than finding her, that dark haired creature, the enthralling thing. It should have told him that he was far past the border and lines that he had known and delineated long before her time. In all truth, he should have recognized them before the moment he threatened to crack under her impossible importance to him.

But as his feet carried him in the direction of the sweet wind, he could think of nothing other than her face, and that for the world's sake, he would be seeing it again soon.

He did not know what would have happened, had he not found her. He could not even bring himself to wonder. The moment the possibility flew into his head he grimaced, clenched his jaws together, and firmly forced it away.

Yes, they had each taken risks before. She had thrown herself from the apex of a monastery, had taken up sword fighting despite her clumsy, klutzy ways, had, on many occasions, disobeyed him and run right into trouble. And he, Sesshoumaru, had allowed her to take each risk, had told her to run to the spirit and stay with her.

At the time, he had thought it would be the best and safest way, the one thing he could be sure of, that she would be safe.

But the moment the dying demoness had pushed her power around the rickety structure, time had slowed, and the worst of his darkest fears had risen and washed over him, had erased everything he thought he knew, and replaced him with the shadow of himself.

A weaker man, an inadequate warrior, a failed Protector.

But he had found her, laying peacefully in the grass, sweet and small and so, very much herself. He had not believed it was she, but could not think of the alternative, if the beautiful creature lying in the grass was not _his_ Kagome.

And then he had seen her breathe, sigh in her sleep, and he was free from the chains of darkness, from the looming power building up inside.

He had been content to watch her sleep, safe beneath his eyes.

When she woke he still did not find the rising fury and anger he had expected. He was no more angry at himself than he was at her. It was much more prudent to bask in the presence of her, than it was to dissect all that had occurred in his head while she was missing.

But even now, a day later, he was missing a final decision.

Oh, he knew, very well what another man- or male- would have done. _They_ would have fixed the growing problem long before he had even realized it.

He could understand why she had affected him, how she charmed her way into everyone's overprotective arms. All he needed to do was look over his shoulder to see two other men who would sacrifice themselves twice over, just to see her well and safe. The accountant had harbored some sort of unrequited feelings toward her, feelings she never noticed because the lanky man kept them carefully hidden behind sharp points of sarcasm and fear. Inuyasha watched her with sharp eyes, like he would a child, started forward at any sign of harm. He was every inch the overprotective watchdog, gruff and caring, keeping her safe from harm.

And Sesshoumaru had long since known that she had swayed him and won him over. She had been very hard to detest though, stumbling in that marble hallway.

So, while this was not a new dilemma for the warlord, he was, curiously, facing a larger problem than he originally believed himself to be.

Certainly, he was attached to her; if he dared to catch himself in the right mood he might have thought himself overly fond of her. Caring, even. Which, as history had proved, was impossible for a being of his stature. Though, Kagome was very good at not only turning everything inside out, but also disproving everything he once took for absolute truth.

Which, after all his truths and realities were broken, brought him back to the core, crux, and central problem.

What was he to do about a twenty one-year-old woman, who had burrowed so deep inside of him that he could not rid himself of her presence? Who wrapped him so tightly in all she was, that every time he looked toward her, he felt himself unraveling, moving toward something he had never experienced or given name to?

He _needed_ her to live.

He dared not follow that truth to its end though, because every minute that slipped by became something starker and darker, something full of deprived hunger and echoing want. He could not finish _that_ thought either, because the last thing he needed was an affirmation that gave him permission to wander over a cliff and ruin everything.

But the fraying edges were not to stop. It was far too late to hope for that. The only thing he was left to wonder was not when it would happen, but what would occur after.

And _that_ was a frightening thought indeed.

It seemed good timing, then, when his thoughts almost drifted over that edge, that they came to the spirit gate, alive and thriving once more, abundant with green vines and flowers. Sesshoumaru gladly abandoned his line of thought to reach for Kagome and help her up the steep incline and back over the threshold they had walked through, much less ominous now that they were free from another duty.

They passed under the spirit gate, and Kagome paused, marveled at the change in the plants twining around the wood, before they continued on down the dirt lane. They moved slowly, mindful of the various aches and pains that persisted after Sesshoumaru's healing. The dust wafted upwards from under their feet, was whipped high into the warm breeze.

They were just passing the shadows of dead trees, and shadowy places when Kagome came to a stop in the middle of the dirt road. Her eyes narrowed as she peered through the dirt on the wind, a sliver of anger trembling across her face. Before Sesshoumaru could stop her, she darted out of arms reach, like a child intent on wrecking havoc.

But it was the look on her face that banished the metaphor from his mind, narrowed his eyes as he watched her shape slink into the shadows of the trees. And then he saw it, the worn and broken temple, the former shrine to the earth goddess.

A low breath of air hissed out from between his teeth and he turned and followed the girl into the darkness. She was already pushing through the doors, disappearing into the shadows. A moment later he caught up with her, his feet crossing the barrier of the doorway to shrine.

The second he stepped foot within, he felt it, the vague echoes, the last evil remnants of the serpent demoness, hanging still in the air.

It looked as if the villagers had not paid homage to the place since Sesshoumaru had met the priest in the dead gardens, so many months ago. Cobwebs and dust littered the walls, collected in the trays where incense once lay. The stench of death and forgotten evils was heavy and thick, like a blanket over each wooden splinter and bolt.

Kagome shivered at the sight. Behind them the floors creaked as Inuyasha, Suzu, and Aeron appeared, varying looks of disgust apparent on their faces. Suzu's eyes flashed angrily and her hands fell, clenched into fists.

Kagome turned in a slow circle and her eyes found and latched onto Sesshoumaru's face. "This place is wrong and wretched." Her words were twisted. They dripped with loathing and disgust, caught in her throat and light the green fury in her eyes.

He said nothing, but only because he felt those words did not do justice to the despicable warping of a former holy place.

The woman bent down and fished around on the floor. When she rose she held a fragment of broken wood in her hands. Kagome looked a question at Sesshoumaru and he gave her the briefest nod of the head, and then Suzu was striding forward, withdrawing out an O-fuda from her robes.

There was a breath and an exhalation, the twisting of fingers laced with magic. When the Mage's daughter backed away the shadows danced in fear of the fire burning steadily against dark wood. Kagome held the burning fragment aloft and allowed her eyes to drift over the rafters, the abandoned, broken floor. A wistful expression twisted her mouth and drew her brow deep over her forehead.

And then she reached out and ignited a wooden beam and then watched it burn.

The fire caught quickly. It licked and ran across the slowly rotting wood, raced over the dusty rafters and through the creaking floorboards beneath them. Sesshoumaru reached out and snagged Kagome's arm, beckoned her away from the flames. They backed slowly from the twisted place and left it to burn. Outside the line of dead trees and brown, scorched grass they stopped, paused a moment in time before continuing on.

Illuminated against the licking fire they swayed and watched the past burn, until slowly, they turned away, and it was only Sesshoumaru and Kagome, staring at the mesmerizing, twisted dance.

The wooden frame of the shrine groaned once and the skeletal beams fell into a fiery pile. High up over dead trees the embers flew, melted into the sunshine, so bright they threatened to purify his eyes, blind him to the world.

A small hand slipped into his, and all his attention was diverted to the soft skin and paradox roughness of her fingers. He looked down at those green eyes, reflecting fire.

"To the tree," she said, and he followed her fingers, the enthralling tug, to wherever she wished to go.


	39. Unbalanced Five

_Author notes updated. Thanks for reading and reviewing. _

* * *

Your arms are the earth folding up around me

Comforting gradually, bury me

There is not what I want in a mountain peak

There is not what I want in a valley deep

- Now It's Overhead, _Turn and Go_

**Chapter 39**

**The Unbalanced Five**

The forest was alive, humming with life. Grass and vines grew up over tree roots, arched and reached toward the clear sky. The heat from the summer sun was left out in the open; in the shade it was cool and calm. Shadows hovered somewhere between green and blue, hid nothing but the forest floor from the shinning rays above. The trees seemed fuller, larger, brighter, than the first time they had entered the wood. The lush vegetation seemed to grow as they passed over it, and at each turn, the paths disappeared in favor of leaves and trees, branches and wildflowers.

Sesshoumaru walked ahead of the other four, eyes open and alert, ears perked for any sounds that signaled movement. He did not think there was anything to worry over, there in the thriving forest, but it never hurt to be prepared. The spirit had been well and alive when Kagome slipped into slumber, but there were many things that could have happened between the moment she closed her eyes and the moment they found themselves inside the enchanted grove.

Through the overgrown vegetation and hanging leaves above the great tree came into focus. The forest spread wide against the broken cragged cliff face in the distance, still mottled and uneven from where Kagome and the power of the forest had unleashed their force.

Overhead the sun and verdant leaves seemed to glow and spark, and through the grass and leaves, in the dirt under their feet, in each leaf and droplet of moisture, pure light radiated beneath the verdant color. Sesshoumaru's sharp eyes narrowed and focused in and he saw the tiny lines of magic, flowing and turning, winding and blurring, like blood through veins, all around the wood.

A small smile touched his lips and he looked back up from the ground, his eyes drifting over the cascading branches of the spirit's ancient tree. The leaves had grown lush and large, were a wall to the inner body of the trunk. But inside he could sense great power, resting and gathering force, reacquainting itself with the land it was once bound to. As they approached, the forest stilled, watched them with curious eyes, brushed across their faces with interested leaves, and snaked around their ankles, testing their intent.

At the edge of the great tree, they halted and waited respectfully, awed and overwhelmed by the beauty surrounding. Kagome appeared at his elbow, eyes trained on the glistening leaves above. At the edge of his vision the other three drifted, walked with their chins tipped up to the sky, their eyes wide and their amazement barely contained.

"She is near," he said, his deep voice quiet against the ensuing sounds of the wood.

No one seemed to care though, and beside him, Kagome nodded absently and let her eyes trail over the beauty of the place, drinking it in.

"I thought it was beautiful before, but now…" Her voice was pitched low in reverent admiration, sweetened with an emotion akin to joy.

He cast a covert glance in her direction, amused by her overwhelmed reaction. "It pleases you to see it so improved."

"Yes, it does." She inhaled deeply and her eyes fluttered shut. "It feels like peace." Her eyes slid open again and she looked up at him, pensive. "I don't mean to belittle her suffering, the wood spirit, but I don't think I truly understood her importance until she was free. I felt the earth sigh in relief, and even though I was unconscious," she shook her head slightly, amused, relieved even, that she had survived again, "I could _feel_ her return to her home.

"The Mage told me, before he died, that the Shikon Jewel was much more than four characteristics of a religion. He told me that some believed it encompassed something greater. The earth."

At her words Sesshoumaru looked away from her and toward Aeron and Suzu, drifting out of sight and around the tree, marveling at its height and magnificence. The couple faded from sight, walked a path around the great monument of the land. The warrior stared determinedly at the place they had occupied.

"He told me that because the earth was the greatest of things, that which we cannot survive without, the other characteristics are not as important, that _they_ would not exist, not without the land and the elements we rely on. And that's why it's part of the jewel. Or, is believed to be." She hesitated, shifted a little closer, tried to capture his attention. "You told me I was the Jewel. You told me the Mage was sure. Is that why I feel so connected to the land, to the earth's kami? Why everything is loosely jointed and laced together?"

Sesshoumaru sighed wearily and looked away from her inquisitive gaze. "It is possible. The jewel has always remained an enigma. Anything the Mage knew, was, really, nothing more than a guess. There has never been any inherent knowledge about the gem. It seems that this supposition, that the jewel is related to the earth is not wrong, though, I cannot say that it is right."

"Mm," Kagome hummed, sounding unconvinced, "but it could be true. And it seems it would make sense, especially considering all the connections appearing between the past and the present, between people and objects."

"It could," he intoned vaguely, neither wishing to affirm or deny the thought.

It pained him to think about the jewel. To think about the danger it brought them.

The danger it brought her.

He had still not recovered his sense of complacency, regarding Kagome.

It had taken days for her aura to return, before he could sense her next to him without looking at her. There had been unimaginable amounts of the magic, sweeping through her body, hiding her in plain view. Kaede had outdone herself, had protected Kagome so well that it had been nearly impossible to recognize her, right there, below his face.

He had thought, as they left the small village and its burning former shrine, that his panic would subside, that dark fears would be recognized and holed away. But when she was still not quite herself, hours and days later, when _still_ there was something off, he had despaired, had seen his own folly, his failure.

And he hated himself for it.

Kagome was watching him, thinking hard, deliberating silently. The intense scrutiny vanished the moment she realized she had been caught staring, and in a swift second she was turning, trying to avoid his deft gaze.

Without thinking, his hand snatched her wrist and drew her back to him. He stared down into her face, wishing she understood and praying that she never would.

It was becoming a delicate balancing act, being so near her.

He struggled to push her away, to keep her close.

"It would be easier," she breathed out, her words just above a whisper, "if you would admit you are worried, rather than play these games. You should know by know, Sesshoumaru, that keeping information from me will not deter me in the slightest."

Damn her to the depths of hell. She had no right knowing him so fully, inside and out. It was infinitely frustrating to have her around, and worse yet, when she moved away from him, tried to dance around the things that lay in between.

"I will not fail," he said lowly.

And though he was sure she did not know the extent of his words and their meaning, perhaps only had an inkling of a clue, she looked up into his face, hers full of nothing but pure honesty and stupid, naïve trust, and said, "I know."

She gave an easy shrug, unconcerned.

"But, I've always known that," she finished, and there was irony in her voice, painted on her face. "Did you think you would? Fail that is?"

He remained mute, trapped in the possibility of his declaration.

A grin shaped her lips and an incredulous brow rose. "I thought not." The sly smile disappeared in lieu of a sharper, more worrisome countenance.

"It will be alright. Remember?" Lies. Wretched, despicable lies. "We'll always find a way out."

"I know," he returned evenly, matching falsehood for falsehood, resisting the urge to trace the fading lines of a smile. "But that has always been the case."

Her eyes trailed over his face; as if she were searching for something she was not quite convinced he possessed, something not outwardly visible. But whatever she was looking for, she let it go, because she was glancing away again, a frown working her lips, pinching across her brow. He thought he heard a tremulous breath whistle out from between her teeth.

He followed her eyes into the distance, allowed a moment to let the rising emotions settle back into place. Through the mist of jade rising in the air, he saw his brother wandering over thickets, under fallen trees covered in moss. He stood out against the life of the forest, an ebony blotch of shadow. Although the distance between them was great, Sesshoumaru could see the speculative look in Inuyasha's umber eyes, his hardly hidden curiosity as he trailed his gaze up over the cliff face Kagome had destroyed.

The cliff. Yet another reminder of Kagome's sickening potential.

Since hearing the Mage's declaration, that his small, spitfire Protector was the Shikon Jewel, he had determinedly ignored the part of himself that echoed the truth over and over in annoying roundelay. While he convinced Kagome not to think about or question it, he had a much greater difficulty trying to convince _himself_.

Moments that were not preoccupied with the harrowing and ever circling problem of the demon or further ways to gain control of his sword- still enough out of his reach to fully anger him- were spent wandering an aversive path around his favorite subject: Kagome. And when thinking about Kagome, it was difficult not to think about the effects of the Mage's words.

_Kagome is the Shikon jewel_.

Sesshoumaru remembered the jewel very well. How it felt, holding that powerful, tiny object in the palm of his hand. In his many years he had experienced more magic and sorcery, secrets and deception, than he cared to admit or acknowledge. But the gemstone had been different than anything he had ever seen or felt before.

And because the jewel had been so unfamiliar and varied from all his other knowledge, he could no more aptly explain the feelings it evoked in him, as he held it in his palm, than he could explain why he could not break himself from the ebony and emerald woman named as the thing itself. Which, his unfortunate mind told him, seemed to fit right in with the Mage's untimely declaration.

Kagome was… many things. And a multitude of those traits were indescribable, enigmatic, and multi faceted. And the jewel, that tiny piece of powerful magic, was extraordinary, a thing that could make and break worlds, a tiny fragment that had never been compromised, that Sesshoumaru had never been able to describe.

If there were not a connection between them, the jewel and the woman, he'd be damned.

The problem was, that if that connection, the power, the pull, and the unforgiving current of Fate, were laced together as fully as the Mage expected, he was _already_ damned.

And Sesshoumaru still had yet to find a truly real and valid reason to question the Miroku's declaration. But he was growing increasingly worried about the truth of the Jewel and the girl, the sword and his power. Truth had eluded him for centuries, and now, on the brink of great discovery and potential, he was tempted to order everyone back the way they had come.

It would be so much easier to send Kagome back to the museum, Inuyasha back to Tokyo, Suzu back to her walled haven, Aeron back to his numbers. It would be so much easier to take his sword and continue on alone.

But, as he mulled over the impossibility of continuing on alone, he was interrupted by the whispers of the forest, the creeping signs that the goddess was returning, was bringing with her all that he had waited and fought for.

With a tired sigh, he looked off into the distance, resigning himself, as always, to whatever lay ahead.

"Come," he said to Kagome, beckoning her after him, "we have waited long enough for truths and answers."

"I quite agree," she murmured, though her bravery had dimmed in the intervening moments, and the strength in her voice wavered against the tide of what was to come.

Sesshoumaru led the way back through the forest green and toward the radiating power of the spirit, moving ever closer. In the eaves of her great tree, Kagome and Sesshoumaru waited, as the others circled in wonder and awe. And before the world changed once more under unyielding force, the great warrior turned and looked at Kagome, just once more, to burn her into his memory, to recall what she was like, before fate took their lives and wrung them dry.

Just one more gaze, one more look.

Just in case. Just to remember.

* * *

Inuyasha cast a perfunctory glance around the glade, impressed, awed, and reverent, but determined not to let it show. He tipped his head back and squinted into the canopy, walked a lazy circle around a horribly overgrown path. Ahead of him, Kagome and Sesshoumaru were drawing near the tree, speaking quietly, the way they did only when around one another.

Aeron and Suzu were walking a weaving trail around the radiant tree, reaching out to brush inquisitive fingers through shinning leaves. From underneath a veiled and curious glance, he caught the demure smile spread across the woman's face, heard the soft fall of Aeron's laugh. Together, they radiated an indescribable, twining power. A power it seemed, that was more one than it was two.

Inuyasha resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

What a stupid man. Only weeks prior he was blowing up dojos and now he was so comfortably suited inside his skin that he had time to befriend and chat up the daughter of his dead benefactor.

It sounded harsh in his head, but it was more or less true, and admittedly, Inuyasha was slow to forgive, liked to cling to first impressions. It was always good to have someone to be sour at, he found. And Aeron fit quite well into that role, regardless of whether or not he had mastered his power, changed his demeanor, and gained a slight sense of humor.

Inuyasha sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets, resisting the urge to turn and snarl at the towering, bent tree and its intense foliage. They were finally where they were supposed to be, and still there was a general sense of foreboding, a realization that no matter what came next, no matter how many times they would succeed, they would always be lacking a real and true end.

This, he decided, was just getting out of hand.

How many times would they be forced to retrace their steps before things started to add up and make a lick of sense?

At least this once more, his mind echoed back primly.

Inuyasha told it to go to hell; he was much happier complaining than listening to common sense.

A heavy sigh escaped his lips and he frowned up at the trees as he continued exploring the outlying areas of the tree. Behind him, his companions melted into the green foliage, their quiet voices drifting away under the sounds of the woods, the trickling of hidden waterfalls, the quiet songs of birds in the overgrown trees. Dark moss grew up the sides of hills, threaded its way into the cracks and crevices of tree trunks.

He reached out and parted the hanging vines, made his way through the breaking tree line. Ahead of him the sunlight was more intense, broke through the green world around him, blinding him with white sunlight. He blinked rapidly and held his hand up before his eyes. Through the blaze of the day he could see the towering cliff face, pocked and marked, rising above the lower wood.

Slowly, his eyes adjusted and he dropped his hand. He stared up at the huge span of rock, face slack with wonder. It was a mammoth thing, that huge part of the earth. Around him boulders dotted the landscape, loomed high, knocked clean and clear, as if they had been chiseled right from the rock face. He could see the indentions and slopes of the dry earth and grass, the places where the slabs of the cliff had fallen.

_Oh_, his mind stuttered.

In a trance he stumbled forward, jaw slack and mouth agape.

If he had ever underestimated the tiny woman he taught his sword skills to, surely, _this_ was an affirmation of her power. Be it her potential or-

He swallowed hard, umber eyes trailing over the rock he stood next to, taller than he by twice his height, weighing a ton at the very least. A curious hand reached, fingers sliding along the hard, sharp surfaces.

Or, he thought again, picking up the shattered train of thought- this was the power she already possessed, hidden underneath intelligent eyes and impish smiles.

He stood in the sunlight and open area, running his hand over the cut out rock, his unbelieving eyes running back and forth between the cliff above and the missing pieces below. Caught up in his disbelief, he didn't immediately notice the change in the air, the vibrating echo. Like a drop of water it fell, rippled into the wind to alter the invisible sensations around him.

The gentle movement touched across his bare skin, sank into his bones. He lifted his eyes and stared through the trees.

And felt his world narrow and dim, flicker in and out.

On his chest, the powerful rosary burned, but the sensation was far and distant, was, in that moment, the least important thing in the world.

Because through the parting trees and foliage, the vines and plants, he caught the flash of dark hair and eyes, the flash of carmine and cream.

There was no mistaking it. Centuries had and would pass and never would he forget the way she moved through the world. Her power was unique, calm and steady, just as she had been. Flickering memories tumbled through his head, flashed before unresponsive eyes pinned to the shadowy tree line.

There was a dull light radiating from between sunshine and earth, power he had not seen in decades. In centuries.

His mind reeled, his shallow breath tapered to a painful stop.

And then it was moving away, slipping through the trees with familiar grace and poise, winking and lilting on the summer wind, tumbling over overgrown pathways.

He moved, darted around the fallen fragments of cliff, ricocheted off the ground. The woods whipped by, a green blur. Tree limbs slapped him in the face, burned across his eyes, and beneath him the land seemed to sway and impede his desperate run.

White and red slipped away, were nothing but a taste on the wind, steadily slipping from his grasp like sand through his fingers. He coiled and sprang, reached nimble hands to ancient branches. Overhead he traveled, slipping around and over, through and under the maze of trunks and fingerlike branches.

Patches of sunlight dotted over him, shined in his eyes, blinded and illuminated him.

The sorcery, raw and familiar, stopped abruptly, turned and darted in another direction. It was a maze, a dizzying pattern he struggled to follow. He gained speed and his movements lost their grace. He fumbled through the thick limbs, maneuvered by instinct rather than sight.

And through the sound of crashing foliage, the thud of his heart, he heard his own voice, repeating the words, over and over into an echoing, endless mantra.

It can't be her.

It can't.

No, no, no, no, no-

And then the power froze, and he flew up and over the place it halted. Propelled forward, startled into a stop, he tumbled end over end, fell through the treetops, ripping through wood and limb to fall to the forest floor. The air in his lungs rushed out upon the heavy impact, and pain danced along his back and spine.

Briefly his vision swam, ebbed in and out of his awareness. Blue hints of sky were visible between the darkened leaves above, highlighted with sunlight and the golden day. Everything around him twisted and turned and all the colors faded into a haze, like a dream he had yet to experience.

And overhead, through blurry eyes, he thought he saw a pale face and dark hair, thought he felt the ghosting of fingertips, trace the line of his jaw.

"Why?" He whispered, reaching a lethargic hand toward the phantom image above him.

His fingers passed through nothing but sweet summer air and as his vision sharpened again, the blurred face disappeared from sight. He thought he heard the snap of twigs and branches as quick, light feet carried a holy woman further into the forest. But it was hard to tell with his head swimming so.

An easy zephyr rifled his hair, threaded unseen intangible fingers through dark locks. He winced against the winking sun overhead, jolly, mocking the aching emptiness welling up from within. The soil underneath his aching back was cool and smelled like the world after a rain.

Slowly, regaining clarity, he inhaled and let his eyes flutter shut, wished he was anywhere but on that forest floor, chased by lovelorn memories. The wind lifted again, whistled gently through the swaying trees.

If he listened close enough, he could almost hear her voice, words she had spoke into his ear, so many centuries before.

A frown marred his countenance.

He was such a fool.

Twice now he had erred, twice now he had been swept away in the recollection of her. Once in battle, once here, in the mystic wood, a place that echoed and paralleled her, the simple priestess he loved.

He lay there for a very long time, caught in the middle of a past and a future, and it was not until another dark haired woman knelt at his side, and cradled his face in her hand, like she knew the twisted pain in his heart, that he allowed his eyes to open, and he returned to his haunting reality.

* * *

Sesshoumaru had been watching her for breathless minutes; staring at her so hard Kagome thought she saw her soul reflected in his eyes. He was looking for something unseen.

But then, she amended, he always did.

As sure as she was that she understood him, moments like this one, suspended in time, did their very best to unhinge her certainty. She was caught up in whatever web he had spun, so silently and effectively, that as they stood there in the glade she had to remind herself to breathe.

Oh, how she wished she had the courage to ask him what lay behind those eyes, a sudden enigma, a cosmic gap between them. It was a crevice, a widening fracture that she did not dare approach. Not yet. Maybe never. The drifting divide was not one that took them farther away from each other, but rather, shunted them so much closer she was surprised to find feet of space between them. It was near frightening being so wrapped up in him.

She almost knew what he was thinking. Almost. But for all that Kagome had learned, for all the things that had made her more of a woman than a sad girl-child living an echo of a life, she did not posses the bravery that would allow her to truly surmise the winding path they had stepped onto somewhere between the moment she ran into him and the moment they came to where they were, standing beneath the great tree.

It was right before her, the answer to everything that lay in between. Right in the ever changing rift. Between two, around two, through two.

But, no, Kagome did not want to know what his eyes spelled and his mind breathed, when he looked at her like that.

But, _oh_, how she did.

A different sort of persistent fear had risen in her, something that had started as a trickle of awareness when they first sat under the stars and spoke things to each other and the dark sky.

The days following Kaede's rescue were hazy and dreamlike in Kagome's mind, but she could remember, with vivid detail, each moment he had stopped himself, to fix her with that same gaze.

Kagome blinked up at him, inhaled shaky air and the scent of summer. Behind them the forest shifted and the sunlight with it. Her eyes were pulled away from his face, the bleeding lines of his clan etched sharply over his stony features, the immediacy of the moment. Green eyes landed on the shadowy figure of a woman, watching them from inside hidden, secret places, in the shade of her tree.

Sesshoumaru's eyes hardened and those fleeting emotions slipped away in the face of real seriousness. He pivoted gracefully and as he turned, Kagome caught the amused lift of an eyebrow, the beginning curve of a caustic smile.

"Pardon my intrusion," the spirit murmured, and in her voice streams and rivers bubbled, rocks and pebbles slipped down a mountainside.

The warrior said nothing and the shadowy figure bowed her head in humble submission. "I see you are still angry with me, for taking the Protector from you. I am sure I caused you and your companions unintentional worry."

Kagome's lips twisted into a bemused smile. Worry was one way to describe it, though frenzied desperation seemed more apt. Her companions, still, days later, kept watchful eyes upon her; like they were afraid the earth would open wide and swallow her whole.

"I did not mean to frighten you, nor keep her from you. It seemed safest to hide her away until all the danger had passed."

Kagome glanced at Sesshoumaru's back, and saw a nearly invisible stiffening along his spine. He was angry, more so than she had seen him in a very long time. The wood kami sighed deeply and the winds blew through the trees, and washed over the grass beneath their feet.

"Is your forest protected?" His voice was hard and double-edged, it cut through the gentle lull of the magic surrounding them.

"It is."

Sesshoumaru turned and regarded Kagome stonily from behind the mask he dragged over his face.

Kagome glanced between the man and the shadowed spirit as the warlord drew into himself, dark and obscured. "I think I'll go find Inuyasha," she murmured, surprised and confused by the fricative anger and the mournful note tingeing the air surrounding her.

Slowly she turned from them, and with irresolute steps, melted into the forest. She cast a few furtive glances over her shoulder, but Sesshoumaru had not taken his gaze from her. It was not until the tree line had encroached on his figure that she turned her face away and traipsed through the wood to find a lost brother, almost as wayward as she.

* * *

Sesshoumaru waited until Kagome disappeared from his sight before turning back to the earth goddess, still and silent before of him.

Kaede stepped out from beneath the shadows and the shade, parting the grass and earth beneath her feet. Sunlight fell upon her, drifting down from the sky above.

When she gazed upon him, he saw eyes of the clearest green, full of power and wisdom, secrets and strife. There was vitality to her power that he had not felt when she was trapped in her prison. Her return to power had rejuvenated her soul and her forest, both intertwined into the complexity that was an ageless creature born of the earth.

But even the impressive display of her power was not enough to alter or diminish his anger.

A small smile spread over the woman's face. "Ah," she breathed in her hushed tone, "I see an apology is not quite enough to change your opinion of me." She paused, and the light in her eyes dimmed, "I had no intentions of wresting her from you, Sesshoumaru. It was to save her life, not to separate her from you."

"I see," he drawled quietly, eyes narrowing dangerously.

She looked away and up into the sky. "Perhaps not the wisest of choices on my part, but in the moment it seemed the safest. It was difficult to tell, you see, if my power would be regained as that evil, wretched creature died. I kept her safe until you found her, and it will not happen again."

"No, it will not," he agreed smoothly. "I have no intention of ever rescuing you again, nor believing in the foolish words of a dying goddess."

"They were not foolish words. They were truths. They _are_ truths. I did not lie to Kagome. Though I am sure you believe I did. I am sure you believe me to be in league with Fate, that I set you upon a path you are destined to follow, a path that does not fit with our personal wishes."

"I do not," he cut in sharply, eyes narrowing on the woman. "There have always been choices, although they are all limited and unassailably abhorrent."

Kaede laughed softly and in the dancing tone he heard ringing remorse and wistful wishes. "There _are_ always choices, unassailably abhorrent or no." Her face lost the last traces of mirth. "You did not have to come back to save me. Indeed, I was sure you would not. Even though the little one, the Protector, gave her promise and I saw it written in her eyes, I did not believe that you would return. She is very honest, is she not?"

"Yes," he hummed lowly, the sound bouncing around into the depths of his chest, "she is."

"She is pure of heart and mind. I should not have doubted her pledge, or your desire for the truth. The two of you are like that sword you wield." A gnarled finger pointed to the powerful weapon at his side. "Double edged, light and dark. But, you already know this, I am sure."

He held her steady gaze, was remiss to speak the truths shared between he and the dark haired spitfire.

"Yes, you do know. And you know what she is now, too, because there is no hiding such a thing."

"Did you know what she was when she first appeared before you?"

Kaede's gaze fell away from his face and her guilt fell as a shadow in the day. "I was aware of her, certainly. And on some very far removed level, I knew what lay beneath her exterior. But I was not quite myself, Sesshoumaru. Pieces of my soul were disengaged and tangled, beyond my awareness. Moments came in and out of my consciousness, while I was there in that prison. I had been cut off from my power for so long it was difficult for me to truly remember where I had come from and what I knew. I must be truthful with you. When I told Kagome of the possible future, when I gave her the vision of where she needed to be, I was not entirely aware of my actions."

A harsh laugh tangled in his throat, and he cast her an incredulous look. "You wish to claim that Fate influenced you, too? The being who told Kagome that she had seen the possible future and its outcomes?"

"Yes," she answered sharply, eyes suddenly hard and indefinable. "There are many choices that could have been made, but I assure you, they are all wound around the same end."

"Interesting. From that perspective it would seem there are no choices, that fate governs all."

The spirit stiffened, fell utterly still. It seemed then, as they stood frozen in the glen, that all of their mistakes, their choices, their magic soared and flew above them, disappeared in the wake of truth.

"No. There is always a choice, but sometimes it is not the one we want or need."

"I do not need a lecture, Kaede. I am well aware of the sacrifices that come with this quest. It was a decision I made long ago. Do not preach to me about unfortunate choices. Do not run circles around my head."

"I know you do not need to be preached to," she replied wearily," but do you not understand? She _is_ the Shikon Jewel and no matter what course you had taken, she still would have been, still will be. There is no way to avoid it. She is. She was always meant to be."

Sesshoumaru's hand fell to the sword at his hip, touched the humming metal with angry claws and indignant fingers. He looked away from her, stared hard into the depths of the green world.

"Then what do you know? We have come this far for you to spin pretty apologies and blame truths on destiny. If Fate is your belief, then tell me what you know and what the future holds."

She stilled against his harsh words and he thought that in the silence, he could hear her weighing the options in her hands, delving through the threads of the future to pick and chose, to aide without changing what was meant to be.

"You are meant to find the Jewel."

He laughed again, but the sound had lost its grating sharpness, was nothing but a soft disbelieving exhalation, heavy with irony.

"How surprising," he intoned slowly, "and completely unexpected. Is that the great secret we risked our lives for? The great truths you alluded to before you sent us up the mountain and we brought death to the Mage?"

Kaede reached out and ran a hand along the low-lying branch of a bent tree, allowed her fingers to curve along the gentle knots and ridges. Underneath her fingers flares of light billowed and jade color traced down the bark and into the dark soil at its roots.

"I remember when you first set foot in my wood, Sesshoumaru, all those centuries ago. I remember when you fought the beast above the high cliff and plucked the jewel from its fingers. I was the earth, the rock, the roots beneath your feet. I remember when first we spoke. I was a different then. I was not Kaede, I was something newer, something great and elemental.

"I remember when you made the sword you carry. I could feel the change in the land. I always know when the Jewel surfaces into the world. It is tied to me, because it is of the rock and the soil. It is of the earth. Its soul is all that we see and perceive."

Her diatribe tapered off and her sadness encroached again, slipped into her face and weighed down her shoulders. She struggled under the enormity of the magic around her; the paths Fate had placed before them.

"I do see many possible futures. But only because I am connected the land, and by turn, connected to the jewel. I am not omniscient and although you disdain the mention of Fate, it does not mean it does not exist. I believe that Kagome was destined to be a part of this quest and that she was meant to house the great power of an enigmatic, paradox weapon. And I believe you were meant to find her, to protect her, to help her save the world.

"Because you see, Sesshoumaru, I do remember who you were, the great warlord, son of the great general. I remember the path your feet followed, where your solitude and your honor led you."

The wind whispered sweetly, echoed of memories and history, long since lost.

"And I remember the day innocent blood was spilled, the day you learned the difference between life and death, the importance of single soul. Even now," she whispered thickly, her eyes swimming with the history she dared to disturb, with rains and pools of glistening waters, "the earth remembers your loss, the tragedy of her ending.

"You may hate me," continued the spirit, lifting her chin, turning her brimming eyes to the sun, "for leaving you with halves of answers, with mysteries and empty promises, but there are some things I cannot tell you. They must be done by you, and you alone.

"You are meant to find the jewel," she repeated, just as firmly as before.

Tired vexations waned, pulled taut and then floated away and the warrior was left with nothing but resolute power, the will to endure.

"Inspiring words from a free woman. You have yet to convince me that by saving you we have profited. And you have certainly not convinced me that your knowledge ends with the jewel."

She shook her head, and he caught the verdant strands of emerald lined her in her silver locks. "You know your duty. You always have."

"And that is all you will say? That I must find the jewel? That I must," his smile turned sharp, his eyes glinting dangerously in the afternoon sun, " 'complete the whole'? And what of Kagome? She has been proclaimed as the gem. What do you say to this, Kaede? If I am to find the jewel, why should I go looking for it if it is inside the creature who is by my side?"

The spirit's eyes fluttered shut in tired resignation and when she spoke again, her stalwart strength faded and cracked under his demands.

"She is the jewel. Without her, one would never possess the gem. One would never find it." She hesitated and her brilliant eyes opened again, wept lancing light in to the glade. He saw the hesitance draw in the frown that marred her features. He watched her struggle against words that might forever change the irrevocable future. "Without one, there is not the other."

"In other words," he sneered, "all will reveal itself in time, or, nothing will ever quite make sense, and as always, we are to continue upon our merry way, blind to the whims of the world and the ever persistent destiny. Because, you, Kaede, are hiding truths. Because you, standing there before me, with all the power that had been stolen from you, fear the changing future. Because you believe so fully in Fate that you will manipulate us, keep information from me. Is that not so?"

The spirit merely bowed her head, a silent apology. When she raised her face, her eyes had cleared, but she was still hollow, still regretful and wavering.

He pinned her with his stare, picked and plucked at the magic drawn in her face and about her eyes.

"You have seen the end of our journey," he stated absently, his anger giving way to detached disbelief.

"I have seen an end. One of many, I assure you."

His hand flexed against the cool metal hilt of his sword, tensed against the knowledge that was not his to gain. Edges of sarcasm needled there way into his words, "And tell me, Kaede, will it be worth it?"

She smiled benevolently, radiated purity and life into the once dying natural domain.

"Only you will know, Sesshoumaru. When the end has been reached, you will know."

"Complete the whole, reach the end, find the jewel. This is the final thing you offer?"

She turned from him, moved slowly through her kingdom.

"No," she finally called, "there is more."

And her great tree parted its heavy leaves and allowed him to follow her into the darkest, safest, most secret part of her forest.

* * *

Kagome stumbled her way over a felled tree, tumbling ungracefully to the ground. Her shoes sank into the soft earth and for a precarious second she wobbled, threatened to fall flat on her face. Luckily, her lessons with Inuyasha had, to some degree, paid off, and she pitched forward, turning awkwardly to save herself from the ground below. Once righted, she looked up and into the outlying areas, her vision dimming as she stood, the blood rushing away from her head as she took a single, unsteady step forward.

Ahead of her, the trees seemed to bend away from an imaginary path, ushering her forward. She could feel Inuyasha somewhere near, immobile and placid, docile and empty. Concerned, Kagome broke into a jog and burst through the leaves and sunlight and into a dense area, covered with the shade of the overarching trees above. Her attention was immediately drawn to the figure lying prone amongst a mound of cracked and shattered tree limbs.

He was staring up at the sky, his amber eyes reflecting the bright hole in the foliage above. Hesitantly, Kagome walked toward him, glancing up into the sky and through the place he had fallen. The heavy foliage parted in a near perfect circle and a bright orb of blue hovered above, dotted with the wisps of white clouds. There did not appear to be anything of pressing importance there in the arch of azure above, and so Kagome looked back down at her friend and companion, her teacher and good-natured rival, void and blank beneath her gaze.

Something clenched sharply in her chest, and the apprehension that had snagged her wound a tighter circle around her heart.

There was an absence of mischief in his eyes, a sorrowful memory tracing just beneath the surface of his handsome face. He seemed cast into shadows, with his dark hair around his face, his thoughts like the roots beneath him, growing up and over his body, dragging him back away from where he belonged.

Kagome looked up quickly, her eyes darting into the hooded and shaded parts of the forest. It was utterly still and silent, and although Kaede had assured her that it was safe, they were protected, she could not help but wonder at the prickling sensation rolling up her spine, the feel of eyes upon her face. But as long, deliberating minutes passed, and the feeling abated, she turned her much needed attention back to the man at her feet, still unmoving.

With great care and cautious discretion, she knelt beside him and stared into his face. He did not seem to notice her as she hovered over him. It was such a twist of reality, to see him without the rambunctious spirit she had always attributed to him.

He was broken and lost without that part of himself.

She reached for him and felt the rest of reality fade away.

Kagome remembered the look on his face when he saw her rise over the green waves of the fields, alive and well, not dead, not injured. And in the moments following her reunion with her friends, she had thought, if ever she took the half demon for granted, she did not deserve his friendship and carefully hidden devotion and care. He was a good man, and she was painfully fond of him, the turbulent, rowdy brother of the Western Warlord.

The ground beneath her yielded under her weight, and she pressed her knee into the cool earth, leaning down and over the man. Her fingers touched his jaw, cradled it gently in her hand. She held his face like she would a brother, a sibling. And in many ways he was that to her, and it hurt so to see him despondent, lacking in the things that made him what he was.

"Inuyasha?"

His gaze flickered, the lids of his eyes slid shut, and the steady shallow breaths of air were disrupted as he sighed. Her hand pressed more insistently, worry curling dark and deep, prickling along her spine and up through her limbs.

His head rolled to face her and those roguish eyes opened to meet her inquisitive gaze.

"Yeah?"

"Are you alright?"

He blinked at her question, frowned as it sank in. She hadn't meant it to be a difficult query, but his pause did not surprise her, not when he was so far from himself, lost in his head.

"Yeah, fine."

Her hand gave a gentle pat against his cheek before slipping away. And although her attentive touch left, her perturbation did not. He was far from fine, but she left him be, and sat back on her heels, carefully removing her gaze from his face to the trees surrounding. He took a minute to sit up, to gather himself together, to pick up the pieces that had been dislodged from their proper places.

They sat in the quiet of the wood, soaking up a moment that was wrong and twisted, one they despairingly pretended was normal and expected.

"Have you ever wished you could just forget everything? Float away on the lies we make to get by?"

Kagome smiled gently, a small laugh catching in her throat.

"Oh, yes, many times."

She felt his eyes fall onto her, and from the corner of her own gaze, determinedly looking elsewhere, she saw them narrow and center on her. She might have worried she had offended him but she saw the tiny smirk form at the corners of his lips, lift his eyes into a sarcastic glower.

"Don't lie."

She shook her head, "I wouldn't. I know what you mean." She chanced a look over her shoulder and watched as the smile faded from his countenance and settled into a grim frown.

"I guess you would know, wouldn't you? What with all you've been through?"

But it wasn't a question that needed to be answered, because they both knew, implicitly, without saying, what the reply would be.

So rather than dwell on shadows and dashed hopes, Kagome stood and offered him her hand. He regarded it disdainfully, but took it anyway, and rose to his feet. His eyes wandered upwards to the place he had fallen from, reflected the blue sky.

"I feel her everywhere," he murmured, "even in my dreams." Kagome bowed her head, watched him through lowered lashes. "But I don't suppose it matters. She's gone and I'm here."

He heaved a heavy sigh and reached up to run his hand through his hair, dislodging the twigs and bits of grass tangled in his shaggy locks. And in the seconds it took him to separate his fingers through strands of hair, he had returned to himself. When he looked back up at her she caught the mischievous glint, the arrogant and cocky charm.

"Come on," she said, holding out a hand to him, "they're waiting."

He glanced at her fingers and then back at her face and before Kagome could stop him he'd swept her up onto his back and launched them off into the forest.

Together they ran back to the companions who waited for them and left the hole in the sky, the memories, the lapse in strength. And for a moment they forgot all about it, those dark heavy things, as they ran through the world.

When Kagome and Inuyasha landed on the ground near the great tree, Aeron, Suzu, and Sesshoumaru had already gathered together again. As the floor rushed to meet them, Kagome's eyes were immediately drawn to the woman standing before the others, the woman she had rescued, had saved from certain death.

Out of the shadows she was truly a breathtaking beauty to behold. Inuyasha had hardly knelt to the ground when Kagome was sliding off his back, starting forward to stare at the great spirit.

She still held the lines and wrinkles of age and time. And just as before, she wore wisdom and knowledge like a cloak. It settled around her, bathed the grass at her feet in divine sagacity. The air around her shimmered with life and vitality, glimmered with reawakened power.

It had been difficult to judge the state of her health and power, when she had remained hidden in the glade, addressing them from shadow. But in the open, in front of her magnificent tree, she was radiant.

The spirit beamed at Kagome and passed her wordless gratitude, a rolling warmth over the wind. Kaede's eyes slid away, fastened on each face in turn. It was not until she had met each eye that she spoke to them, her power and strength like rock and stone, like mountains and cliffs in her tone, the words she chose to speak to them, the little band of warriors.

"I have no words that would fully express my gratitude to each of you. I had long since lost faith in humanity, in my own power, in the world I had so loved. I did not take the words of the Protector seriously, when she promised to save me. And for that I am sorry, but ever thankful that I was so mistaken.

"You risked much to come to my aid. You might have lost everything in your venture." Her eyes flickered to Sesshoumaru, resilient and silent at Kagome's side. "But you came for me anyway, and showed a bravery and courage beyond any I have seen before." Her knowing gaze fell to Kagome, bored straight through, peeled back each wall and layer, burrowed deep into her soul. "I believe you already know the greatest secret I ever told, little one. Perhaps you have known it all along?"

Kagome could not bring herself to nod or shake her head. It was beyond her, to admit to such knowledge. She could not have said, honestly, that she ever knew one way or another. Truth had eluded her for the better part of her life, and hovering on the edge of the newest part of their journey, it was not within her capacity to fathom answers. It was all she could do to hold the spirit's powerful gaze; words were far from her head and lost within a stuttering heart.

"I am sure the world was always something that toyed with you, that there were always things you knew, but could never put to words." Lines of joy creased around shinning eyes, "You are something great, little Protector. Something that no one else has ever been. But your warrior has already told you what you are, so it is no great surprise or truth that I tell you. It is merely an affirmation."

Kagome's nodded shortly and attempted to steady her uneven breath without drawing the attention of the others around her. A strong hand touched her arm, and though Sesshoumaru remained a staunch statue, eyes rooted on the great kami, his fingers gave her balance, helped her not to fall under enormity and weakening strength.

"The Protector of the sword is the Shikon Jewel."

Keade's voice dipped low, smoothed into a gentle lull, one that caught them and tugged them inwards, held both absolute truth and silent warnings.

"Whether you believe in Fate or not, you have a duty and an obligation to this woman. If you help her you help the world. If you fail her you it will ruin us all. It is a heavy task to lay before you, but there are powers and forces greater than we can imagine, and," a twinkle sparkled in her eyes, "they have been at work for a very long time, to bring us to this moment. You are on the threshold of yet another future. And you have a choice now, warriors."

She looked each in the eye and the soft, caring look left her face, trickled out to be replaced by harsh determination and stalwart strength.

"Will you fight or will you run?"

From the corner of her eye, Kagome saw the new mage jerk at the words, glance toward Suzu, standing beside him.

"It is your choice. It will _always_ be your choice."

The wood surrounding them fell quiet under the declaration. Long moments passed, and through all of it, Kagome held her breath, tried, unsuccessfully, to calm her racing heart, to dispel the sudden fear that she would be left by the people she trusted most. The words seemed to twist and change before her eyes, wrapping themselves up into the world, becoming tangible things. The enigmatic sorcery of the being could not be fought, and soon all thoughts left Kagome's head, and she stood riveted on the woman before her, anchored to the man beside her.

Silent choices arched and swelled, and as each deliberating moment passed, Kagome felt herself skating toward the unknown, a future alone, hovering before her.

Her mind reeled.

They couldn't leave now. They couldn't give up after they had come so far.

He wouldn't give up.

He couldn't.

_Oh, please_-

But decisions had been made long before Kaede asked them to weight their options, to choose to stay, or to cut and run from the peril they faced.

The fingers around her arm remained, reminded her of choices made.

"You choose well," the wood spirit murmured to men and woman around the faltering Protector.

There was relief in her words, and Kagome knew because she felt it wash over her; dispel the fiery fear that had grasped at her so desperately.

Kaede smiled gently, her eyes on Kagome's ashen face.

"You will find the jewel and you will fight the demon. That is your path. I cannot say that you will achieve it, for I do not know. How I wish I could tell you, without a doubt, that you will succeed. But there are many shadows, and many roads, and I do not know. I wish there was more that I could give you in return for what you have given me."

Jade eyes fell on Aeron, all the tall, lanky parts of him. In the shady glade the gold around his wrists were as beacons, reminders of their plight, and what they had given up to make it to the tree.

The spirit beckoned him forward, the awkward man. He walked with greater grace than Kagome remembered, held greater power in his step. There was determination in his face, mirrored in his dark glasses-less eyes.

Kaede reached up within the hanging branches of her ancient tree, curled her fingers around a crooked limb. It gave way with little resistance and slid through her hands and toward the ground. She ran her fingers over it, and before their eyes, the green sprigs of leaves fell away and melted into a smoother surface of wood.

The branch was nearly as tall as the earth goddess, was knotted and twisted, warped into a twisting, coiled rod. At the top, a tapering branch curled and at its very end, five leaves remained, vibrant and full, lined with veins of green life. The woman examined the limb, running appraising eyes along its length, and then, with the utmost care and deliberation, she extended her hand, and deposited the object in Aeron's open palms.

The man stared down at the object, his back to his companions. But Kagome did not need to see his eyes to feel the wonder and awe that echoed from within him. He turned the branch over and gently set it against the ground. His right hand moved to hold it steady, and as it did, midnight and dark skies swelled from his fingertips, washed over them in a blinding flash of light. In the swarm of power, Kagome felt the windswept mountainsides, caught the faint whiff of incense, and thought she heard the sound of a deep laugh that belonged with twinkling eyes.

When Kagome's eyes cleared he stood before them, well and whole, a staff decorated with hanging golden rings at his side.

"It seems only right," the Kaede murmured, "that you be armed with the proper weapons. This is my gift to you, Mage."

There was a quaking moment of silence and then a hoarse, "Thank you," and Aeron was turning to look at Suzu, frozen in place, her dark eyes fixed on the staff and the memories it held.

Kaede regarded the other four, withdrawing from the awestruck sorcerer, "There is not much more I can give you, than words and truths you already know."

They had known that though, even when they wished it not to be true.

Kagome looked up again, allowed herself a moment more, to take in the return of power to the woods.

This was why they had saved her, to bring life back again.

This was why they would choose the hardest path, the difficult future.

Because some things were worth protecting and some things deserved to survive.

She looked up at the warlord and felt him let her go. She slipped out of his grasp, bowed deeply to the woman who had given her more than she could ever put into words, and turned away from her companions, overcome with unimaginable gratitude, grief, and guileless hope.

The other three followed Kagome to the cliff, and looked out over the churning past, the persistent present, and the shadowy future. But the warrior watched them go, hung back to hear final words.

"I know I did not answer your question," Kaede said softly. Sesshoumaru looked down at her. "Whether it is worth it."

Golden eyes flecked with the history of great things trailed over the receding back of a young woman, standing beneath the gargantuan earthen form.

"It is," he said and turned and walked away.

* * *

In the shady glades and glens, under the copses and hanging branches of ancient trees, a dark silhouette blurred, melted into green shades. She hovered, avoidant of light.

The wood spirit might have passed the place the woman stood, had she not caught the traces of magic, lingering and old, tainting the earth beneath her feet.

It was a power she recalled, somewhere deep in the recesses of her aged mind.

The leaves parted and she walked toward the dark woman.

" Greetings, priestess." A humble head bowed low in reverence. "You are very far from your temple sanctuary. You have not left its confine for a very long time."

"I had to come and see if it was true, that you had returned."

"I have."

The priestess turned black eyes to the distance, where, over the cool day, the faint sounds of voices were carried, bouncing off trees and stones, echoing gently along the pathways.

"They are well?" The holy woman asked softly, haltingly.

Kaede expelled a gentle sigh and as she did the wind whispered thoughtfully through the trees. Her hand rose, and in it, green sorcery appeared, twisting and twining to form a ghostly shape.

"They are well," the goddess assured her.

"Has the girl succeeded in her quest?"

The verdant magic swelled, gained mass and volume, hovered above the lined palm. "She is succeeding, a little bit every day. She is very powerful, priestess. She saved my life, brought me back from the brink of death. Her abilities are fleeting and inconsistent, but they exist, and she is winning, against all odds."

"Good," the woman murmured distractedly, turning back toward the voices, a longing emotion crossing her beautiful face.

Moments rolled on, and still they stood, listening to the voices of the warriors, nothing but tones and lilts upon the wind.

"I took Kagome from them for just a little while," Kaede said suddenly, admitting the fault she had committed. "I took her to save her life, but to do something else, something more."

"To do what?" The priestess asked with quiet, adoring reverence.

"To give them strength. They possessed power before, but now they are united for her, because she is important. Because she is-"

"Because she is going to save the world and they love her too much to let her go."

The magic in the goddesses' hand faltered and disappeared, leaving something tiny and insignificant in its wake.

"Because they love her," Kaede repeated, "and they know it now, and why she must live." Her hand cradled the small, white object in her hand, reached out toward the delicate priestess at her side.

The woman looked at the spirit, startled, her hands rising, palms open.

"I remember you," Kaede uttered gently. "You were part of a temple, centuries ago. You paid homage to me, so devout in your ways. I remember now." Bright eyes flashed into the distance where a half-breed waited amongst his companions in the midst of his new life. "He is well, too, if that is why you came."

The wood spirit smiled sadly at the injustice of history running across the delicate features of the fragile soul to her side.

Words were futile. They could not heal the past. But the future was before them, in the unbalanced five, and they were the answers to ancient prayers, the way to end the long history of evil and failure.

The wood spirit nodded once to the priestess and then parted from her, moved off into her deep and thriving woods, back to the place she belonged, to the place she loved.

The priestess watched the ancient being disappear, and it was only when her magic had faded and dissipated into the ether did she open her fingers to stare down at the soft petals of a simple white flower, abundant with life. Cradling it close to her heart, she retreated from the living back into her solitude, safe in history forgotten. Safe from love lost, just out of reach.


	40. The Red Bridge

_Thanks, again, to those of you who review. If I haven't responded anyone's reviews it's because of forgetfulness not because I am ungrateful. On that note, I will be extremely busy between now and December 14th. If I do not update in two weeks it is because it is unavoidable. Stick with me, I plan to write and write and write over break._

* * *

"Dames.

Sometimes all they gotta do is let it out.

And a few buckets later.

There's no way you'd know."

- Marv, _Sin City_

**Chapter 40**

**The Red Bridge**

Aeron followed Kagome's quick footsteps, apprehensive. As she brushed past him, he caught a glance of her ashen countenance, the dark shadow of her brow, the distance in her eyes. She broke into a jog, hurried away from her companions, all watching her retreating back.

The accountant turned sorcerer flicked a look at Sesshoumaru, who nodded once, before starting after her. It did not take him long to catch up with her. She had not gone far.

At the base of the cliff she had once destroyed, she stood, apparently staring at the rock face. He approached her slowly; vaguely aware that both Inuyasha and Suzu had followed him, though both kept their wary distance.

"Kagome?" He asked softly, inching toward her.

She inhaled shakily, and then exhaled a tremulous note.

"Are you alright?"

From behind her he watched as her hands raised and pressed into her face, an attempt to smother cascading emotion.

He gave her a few awkward moments before moving closer, standing just enough behind her to look over her shoulder and catch the barest glimpse of her profile.

"Kagome?"

"I'm fine," she said hastily, voice hoarse. "I'm just- I just need a moment. Sorry. Sorry."

He shrugged, feeling useless and uneasy. "Um, is there anything I can do for you?"

"No," she whispered weakly.

He turned a little, narrowed his eyes against the glare of the sun as he regarded Suzu and Inuyasha, hovering at the edge of the clearing.

He thought to himself for a moment, before offering quietly, "Because I won't mind listening, if you want to talk about it."

"I know," she murmured, "I know. Thank you. I'll be fine. I'm fine. Just give me a second. I need to think. I just need to think." She leaned toward the cliff, sagging, letting her head fall to meet the rocky surface.

Mildly alarmed, Aeron watched her hands fall to her sides and clench into fists, knuckles turning white under the pressure.

"Are you sure you're alright?" He inquired again, keeping his voice low.

"Oh," she sighed, expelling some of the emotion that startled him so, one of her hands relaxing to reach out and touch the earth she leaned against, "I don't even know anymore. Sometimes, most times, I am."

"And now?"

"Now I need a moment to remember how to be alright," she answered evenly, her second hand un-fisting to hang limply at her side.

"Ok," he amended easily, turning away from her again, though he remained by her side.

Aeron watched Suzu speak to Inuyasha, who continually cast worried, accusing glances at Aeron. Through the trees, he could see Sesshoumaru's indistinct, luminous shape. It appeared the wood spirit was leaving them to their own devices, fading away into her lands as easily as she had arrived.

He looked down at his hands, his fingers wrapped around the smooth wood of the staff in his fingers. The golden rings hung at his eye level, glinting pleasantly, as if pleased with themselves. He shifted the branch and the circlets jangled against one another, bouncing magic into the air. It mingled with the current threading its way through the wood under his hands, calmed and pacified it into something docile and malleable.

He was still having a rather difficult time, finding the right words to describe the emotions the staff churned within him. Vague memories danced at the edges of his mind, pictures and unformed recollections. It seemed as if he had held something like this before, long, long ago. But that couldn't be right, because the only thing Aeron ever remembered carrying was an umbrella, and only on the most rainy of days.

He sighed to himself, transferring the magical object from his right hand to his left, pondering over the implications of the kami's gift. He was already experiencing greater control over the magic within his soul. It seemed that the staff offered an anchor that he had not possessed before, and coupled with Suzu's iron grip on his sorcery, he was almost able to entirely forget about the power he housed.

If only it hadn't altered his life so, he would be able to gain some peace.

Behind him, Kagome was straightening, tucking her hair behind her ears, brushing off her shirt and squaring her shoulders. She sucked in one more calming breath before turning around.

She was as before, ever Kagome, a spark in her eye, a smile waiting to alight on her lips. But there was a lingering melancholy to her, a weariness that he found disquieting.

He didn't blame her though; she had every right to feel overwhelmed. He couldn't remember the last time _he_ had been heralded as a living weapon and ancient artifact. In any case, he had had a pretty difficult time sorting through the idea that he was a sorcerer, never mind a pat of the quest for the Shikon Jewel. To be honest, Aeron was surprised Kagome hadn't given up long ago, let alone given into more completely understandable, emotional moments.

It must have been the influence of the two stoic warriors that affected her so.

He glanced at Inuyasha, and saw that the man was pointedly glaring at him, though, Aeron could think of nothing he had done since entering the wood that would have earned him the enmity of the other man.

Mentally, he heaved a great sigh.

Yes, it was definitely the Taisho brothers, and their horrible ability to endure all, that had given Kagome her increased ability to _also_ handle all things ridiculous.

He glanced back down at the woman he had known once, on the other side of the world.

"Better now?"

She cast him a slight smile. "I am. Thank you."

He returned the grin, glad to see her smile again. "Sure."

The merriment on her countenance dimmed a little, the smile losing some of its glee in the face of real seriousness. "No," she said firmly, "thank you, really. For everything."

He shook his head, confused, but she continued on, saying firmly, "Thank you for believing me and staying with us, and for risking your life, and going through pain and-"

"Kagome. Shut up. This isn't just about me trusting your fantastic story. Not any more. I have other reasons to be here. Though," he admitted quietly, "that's not to say you aren't important. It's just that-"

"You've found other reasons to succeed," she finished for him.

He glanced up and into the distance. His eyes caught the darker gaze of the other mage, standing serenely by.

"Yeah."

"Me, too," Kagome murmured.

He blinked and looked down at her, but she was already shrugging off the words, her eyes already turned to some indeterminate point in the forest, something safe, something that did not reveal the meaning behind her words.

"But just the same, thanks. I had to tell you at least once. You needed to know."

He shook his head again, marveling at her. "You are an amazing thing, Kagome."

She laughed and looked up at him, her dark eyebrow raised questioningly. "Why?"

"Because there is no one else who could do this. No one at all. And you are so very much yourself."

So very much so that it was heartbreaking. So very much so that he wished there were anything, something, anything that he could do to ensure her safety and preservation.

But Aeron was not the only one who felt that way about her, Kagome, the museum assistant from across the world. And he was glad for that, because to lose her would have been a tragedy. It almost had been, when the dying serpent had nearly snuffed out their hope.

He felt the radiating power of the pale warrior, grow close and encompass them all. He looked away from her features and toward Sesshoumaru, weaving his graceful way around the boulders and fragments of cliff.

Not for the first time, but for, perhaps, the first in his conscious thought, Aeron was infinitely glad the warrior was the one watching out for her. Because as long as he was alive, Kagome would be well and fine, whole and so very much herself.

He sighed pleasantly and hummed to himself, "Yes, it's a good thing."

"What is?" Kagome asked, though her attention was already diverted to the warlord nearing them.

He smiled again and tipped his stave toward her. "That you are so very much yourself."

He patted her shoulder with his large hand and then slipped away from her confused silence, found his way back to Suzu's side, the place that suited him best.

* * *

Sesshoumaru glanced at the four faces before him, taking care to examine each. They neither wavered nor flinched under the steady gaze her subjected them to, a sign that he was either losing his edge, or they really were determined to carry on with their task.

He found neither particularly agreeable.

"I see no reason why our path will not continue on its weary way, as it has up to this confounding point. The wood spirit cannot or will not assist us any further than to tell us that we are to find the jewel. Since Kagome is, indeed, the gem, which has been stressed more times than is necessary, it seems we are already possess an advantage over our enemies and those beings and forces that might contrive to hinder our quest."

Inuyasha shifted on his feet, impatient. "So, what are we going to do with this advantage?"

Sesshoumaru stared down his brother, and Inuyasha quickly averted his eyes.

"Bide our time," Kagome answered evenly. She frowned and brought her hand to her mouth, her teeth flashing as they chewed on a ragged thumbnail. "It's pretty safe to assume that as long as the demon doesn't know what I am, we have a better chance of completing our task, right?" When Sesshoumaru nodded she hesitated before continuing slowly, "We don't have much, if anything to go on, but with me maybe we'll have some clues. Maybe I'll receive visions again. Or maybe I'll know, since, I'm…" her voice faltered and she dropped her hand away from her mouth. "It's the only thing we can do, wait and try what we know. Maybe it won't be as dangerous if Onigumo doesn't catch wind of our plans."

Inuyasha cast her a skeptical look. "Well," She snapped, "I can hold out hope can't I?"

"Yes," Suzu interrupted smoothly, "you can. As we all should. Time is not so pressing when our enemies are not breathing down our necks, following our every move. I am sure we will meet with them again; they know who we are and where to find us. But, if they do not know our plans…"

"We posses the advantage," Sesshoumaru ended calmly.

"So, where do start?" Aeron asked mildly, still preoccupied with the staff in his hands. He was allowing his magic to wash over the weapon, and short, distracting bursts of azure light floated out into the day, originating from the golden ringlets hanging by the knotted wood.

"Do you have to do that?" Inuyasha asked brusquely, eyes narrowing to dangerous slits of umber.

Startled, Aeron fumbled, abruptly cutting off his magic. "Oh. Sorry."

Kagome rolled her eyes and Suzu hid an amused smile.

"We start," Sesshoumaru leveled, a warning in his deep voice, "here. At the beginning."

Four sets of eyes looked past him to the tapering cliff edge, towering above.

"The sword was found here. I fought for and recovered a piece of the jewel at this spot."

"I've wandered through these woods before, a long time ago," Inuyasha echoed dully.

"And we fought the demon here, not months before now," Kagome offered, her eyes rooted on the rock face.

"And Kagome decimated the cliff," Aeron added, a note of reverence held in his words.

Suzu looked off into the distance where path had been overgrown with the forest floor. "My father traveled through the town on the outskirts of this forest."

Kagome returned her gaze to Sesshoumaru. "I can't promise it will bring us any information."

"I am well aware," Sesshoumaru returned.

"Alright then. No time like the present." And with that she moved past them to the cliff face, folded her legs beneath her, reached a hand out to tough the rough rock, and descended into meditation.

Inuyasha sighed and leaned back against one of the impressive boulders, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Why do you think Kaede could tell us riddles but not help is make them out?" The man wondered aloud.

Sesshoumaru sent him an enduring glare and the younger man frowned, but said no more, and opted to, instead, watch as Aeron and Suzu drifted away, their voices low and distant, a pleasant hum against the silence of the day.

"She did not tell us anything because regardless of whether or not she will admit to it, she believes in the Fate, destiny, and providence. For all that she danced around her involvement in our predicament, it is obvious that Kaede believes that to aid us too much is to forever change what could and will be."

"That doesn't add up at all," Inuyasha muttered staunchly. "What about choices?"

"What about them?"

"Why talk about them as if they matter when they don't?"

Sesshoumaru looked over his shoulder at Kagome, deep in her meditative state. His hand slipped to the nameless sword, and within its cool metal he could feel the residual reverberations of her aura, sweeping and ebbing like the waves of the ocean. Reassured that she was well and unharmed, he regarded his younger sibling again.

"Because they do matter. For Kaede, Fate still includes choices."

"But if there are choices is there an all encompassing fate?"

Sesshoumaru raised an uninterested brow. "Surely you are not asking my opinion on destiny? I thought my stance had been quite clear."

Inuyasha shrugged, but he looked troubled.

"Why spend your time worrying whether there is some overarching predestination? _Would_ it change your choices? What you had done until now?"

A dark head shook slowly.

"Then why waste your precious time, Inuyasha?"

Sesshoumaru moved past the man and toward Kagome. He was almost to her side when he heard the words, so low they were almost lost in the silence surrounding them.

"Because I need to know if there was a reason why I lost her."

When the warlord looked back, Inuyasha was walking away, and his words lay forgotten, trailing in his shadow.

* * *

"My father had a staff once."

"Ah, that would explain the reoccurring memories. I had this anxious feeling like I had left the gas on, or something as equally damaging. Except it was more along the lines of, 'I think I left my other staff in the broom closet at home'."

Suzu smiled, but the gesture lacked the normal warmth behind her eyes.

"Is something wrong?" Aeron asked, deceptively nonchalant. "You usually laugh when I make poor attempts at humor."

"No," she reassured him, "everything is fine."

He wasn't convinced. He glanced down at her profile, and caught the pinched look marring her features, the worry etched in her eyes. He cleared his throat and began to walk again, hoping that whatever it was, she would just up and tell him, god damn it.

A small hand snagged the gaping sleeves of his dark robes. He stumbled and pitched around to face her.

"There is something I have to do."

He watched her for a moment before murmuring slowly, "Ok."

"It is very important. I would not- If it was not so important-"

Realization hit him so hard he forgot how to breathe.

"_Oh_."

She shook her head, a pleading look rising in her eyes, her fingers clutching his clothing tighter.

"You're leaving," he uttered, winded.

"Please, understand-"

He stilled her twisting fingers. "No, no, I do." Not true. Lies. He didn't understand at all. "You helped me more than anyone else ever could," he said strongly, with greater fortitude than he felt. "I never expected you to stay." He smiled weakly, "It's too much to ask."

His chest constricted as he spoke, almost choked off his words. Everything else seemed to evaporate in the blindsiding moment.

She was leaving.

_Leaving_.

Probably for good.

He'd never see her again.

He tried to tell himself it was to be expected, but he had always hated liars and cowards. Two things he had once been. It seemed ironic then, that he should wish for that part of himself back, just to get him through the hanging and vulnerable future, shaping and changing as he stood and wished, desperately, that her words were untrue.

Suzu pulled back a little and he took the opportunity to hold her slack fingers in his own, trying to impart words he could not bring himself to say.

Don't go.

Don't leave.

Not yet.

Stay, just a little while more.

"_Is_ it too much to ask?" She echoed softly. "Because I would hope that if I asked you to stay, you would."

He blinked down at her. "What?"

But she was speaking again, quietly, quickly, desperately. "I need to do something. I would only leave if it was of the greatest importance." She looked torn. "As it is, I can hardly justify the reason to myself. But I think I must go now. I think I am meant to."

"Right, right. I understand."

"No," she said, smiling then, her hand slipping from his to rest against his cheek. "No, you don't. I will be back. I will. Nothing could stop me from this quest. There is just one thing I have to do. For my father. Maybe even for our journey. I will be back, Aeron. There is no need to fear."

Her fingers were warm; distracting him from the immediate panic he was experiencing. Faintly he asked, "Why now? Why so suddenly?"

Her gaze fell to the staff nestled in the crook of his arm. "I was reminded."

"Right. Of course. Well," he hesitated, his grip on her hand tightening fractionally. "If you have to go, then you should. When, um, when?"

A pained expression passed through her eyes. "Now."

"_Now_?"

"Now."

He swallowed hard, and drew in a deep, shaky breath.

"You can do this without me. Now that you have the staff, I am not necessary."

He closed his eyes. "Yes, yes you are."

"But you will be fine without me. You can handle the magic without my assistance. For a little while."

He couldn't agree. He didn't want to. Because it wasn't true.

"I will be back," she stressed again.

His eyes opened and he allowed them to trace over her face again, memorizing it, painting it into his memory.

"If you don't come back, that's ok, too. Don't die though, that just wouldn't work. But, if, for some reason, you can't or don't want to… it's ok. I understand."

She laughed then, like she did when he tried to make her smile. Confused, he opened his mouth to question her, but she shook her head, a fond, enduring emotion settling in the wake of her fear and worry.

"You are such a foolish man." But there was no insult in her words, only affection and warmth. "Do you not understand?"

But he was not to answer her, as she stood on her toes and pressed a sweet kiss against his mouth, a goodbye, a farewell.

But it was not a kiss that ended all things. No, he knew what those felt like. They closed doors and pitched things into darker shades.

_This_ was a kiss of promises and hopes he dared to dream.

And then it was over, that chaste, pure press of lips, and she was slipping from his arms, backing away onto the overgrown path, her eyes bright and shinning. And before he knew it, she was gone.

* * *

Kagome was grasping at straws. There was nothing tangible she could reach out and snag, nothing to pull her in and wrap herself around. There was magic, yes, but none of the sorcery from the woods and the earth helped her discover what she was meant to do next. The radiating power was nothing but a comforting lull beneath her fingertips and soft buzzing in her head.

As much as she hoped she would not be immediately thrown into a horrendous vision, she couldn't help but feel hallow and disappointed, when she opened her eyes with no new leads, nothing to bring them closer to that damnedable completion of a whole.

She blinked against the bright rays of sunshine, and took a moment to reorient herself, dragging her conscious out of the comforting presence of the earth and back into pressing reality.

A shadow fell over her, and her eyes cleared.

"Nothing," she murmured morosely.

"It does not matter."

She sighed and began to rise to her feet, taking the hand he offered her. "I wish I could believe that," she muttered when she stood next to him again.

"Why do you not?"

A caustic little laugh fell onto the sweet breeze and she turned a knowing smile on his face. "Because it's a lie?"

Sesshoumaru inhaled slowly, his eyes on the rock and earth arching above. "It is not a lie," he insisted, and Kagome thought she heard hidden humor in his words. "And you should believe it."

"Why?" She wondered aloud, incredulous. "Because you say?"

He turned his eyes to her, leveled her with his intense, pure gaze. "Yes," was the simple reply.

Kagome blinked at the certainty of his statement, but she couldn't and wouldn't argue with him. Because she wanted him to be right.

"Ok," she agreed quietly, "it doesn't matter."

"Good," he rumbled back, "then if there is nothing left for us to do here-"

"Let's go home."

They turned from the past written in rocks and earth and headed back towards paths wandered long and weary. It was not until they were deep into the green forest that Kagome realized Aeron was trailing far behind, and missing, at his side, was his constant, Suzu.

She faltered, was about to go back to him when she saw the emotion in his downcast eyes.

He looked as if his world had ended.

A forlorn, dejected feeling lodged itself deep in her chest, squeezing painfully. Paused, indecisive and wavering, she sought for words to cast out to him, and found none. Before her, Sesshoumaru had slowed, was watching her over his shoulder.

As he passed through patches of sunlight, she blinked against the luminous light threading through his pale features and silver hair. For the slightest of seconds, she wondered if he was unreal, a dream, a reality that was not her own. But shadows returned and he lost all the blurred edges and divine light, and he was nothing but a warrior king swathed in grey.

And Kagome was glad he was before her, happy she could not find the words to comfort Aeron.

Because if she could, she would have lost something great, to know such pain. So, she left the Mage behind, though her thoughts and her heart went with him, and caught up with the man who looked over her, steadfast and strong, and thanked the all knowing something that he was by her side.

* * *

Ajax was warming up to him, so there was that at least.

But Aeron couldn't think of much else to cheer himself up with.

The tall man sighed, and reached down to ruffle the corgi's coarse fur. The dog cocked its head as Aeron scratched underneath his collar, leaning into the long leg stretched out next to him.

The man looked up around him, and at the despondent ruins of the former dojo, still sitting upon the hill surrounded by trees. Sated with scratches, Ajax wandered off to sniff around the shattered wood, trailing after his owner, somewhere out in the forest.

Kagome had taken to walks alone since they returned to Sesshoumaru's home.

But then, so had Aeron.

Walks through the twisted forest allowed him time to think, but with time came worry. The staff in his hands was a comforting presence in the midst of that distress and anxiety. It reminded him of Suzu, and although it sounded trite and weak, it was true.

He just wished he knew she was all right, that her reasons for leaving would not bring her near danger. Not that she couldn't handle herself. He was well aware of her abilities. But her skills did not nullify her absence or what it did to him.

Heaving another sigh, Aeron climbed to his feet, leaning on the staff for support. Around him the broken fragments of the dojo mocked him, were a testament of an early and foolish failure. Beneath his feet, the splinters of wood ground into the soft earth, disappearing underneath sparse grass. He bent double and reached to snag a large shard, holding it up before his dark eyes.

He turned the wood piece over in his palm, examining all of its splintering angles, an innate curiosity rising as a result of the broken fragment between his fingers. Magic caught and sparked, threaded down from the golden rings hanging from the stave. Azure sorcery seeped out from his weapon, drifted through the air like mist. Coils of power threaded to the ground and wound deep and thick, obscuring the muddy earth from sight.

In his hand, the shard of wood hummed, was washed over in blue.

The mist thickened until there was nothing but a haze of midnight and the sharp spike of power. The staff in his other hand warmed beneath his touch, and low and clear, a sound echoed out, like a bell that had been rung, its sound winding down and outward, a rolling call.

In a hovering second, everything was muted under the tone, and then the wind shifted, cleared the rising magic from the glade, swept it off as easily as it had appeared, and Aeron was left standing in the middle of the dojo, whole once more.

He blinked in mild surprise and interest and his eyes fell upon a shape, hanging back amongst the tree line.

Kagome stared wonderingly at him, a slight smile quirking her lips.

"Wow," she murmured, with enough incredulity to make him scowl.

"You knew I was the mage," he shot back, feeling slightly wounded that his, in Aeron's opinion, most impressive unaided magical feat was going to go unnoticed.

"Don't sound so hurt, I'm properly impressed." She walked out from the tree line and into the dojo, her eyes tracing over the perfect wood, the etchings in the red paint, each tile of the roof. "Very impressed," she added absently, after giving herself a few moments to let it all in. A curious hand reached out and smoothed along the surface of a wooden beam.

Aeron sighed and looked back down at his fingers and the one wood fragment, still in his clutches. Just on the edge of his awareness he felt the tiny crack, the missing piece, humming insistently. Turning on his heel he moved to the edge of the dojo, where, in a flawless red beam, there was a single cut, a hole large enough for him to place the wood shard within. With large, adroit fingers, he carefully set the splinter where it was to be, and watched as a flash of blue sparked at the place, knitting the wood back together, completing the whole.

He stared at the spot, no different than the rest of the crimson wood, perfect and intact.

Behind him, Kagome watched his back, and he could feel her eyes, her hesitance, the words that she wanted to speak but could not bring herself to say.

"She said she had something to do. For her father and perhaps, for our quest."

"You let her go?"

He laughed softly and cast a knowing look over his dark clad shoulder. "Could I have made her stay, do you think?"

Kagome did not return the sad smile; she merely shrugged and looked out into the forest where Ajax was returning from some adventure, covered in dirt and leaves.

"She said it wasn't too much to ask." He startled himself as he spoke, his words erupting out of a harrowing, dwindling loneliness. "It wasn't too much to ask her to stay."

"Did you?"

He frowned, thinking hard. "I don't… I don't think so. I told her it was alright if she wanted to go, that I understood."

Kagome's smile returned then, and it was full of fond light, incredulous and affectionate. "Oh, you silly man," she laughed, shaking her head at him.

"What?"

"You were supposed to tell her to stay."

Aeron's frown deepened and he looked back down at the staff in his hands. "She said she would come back."

"Of course she will."

His head jerked up so fast he thought he heard his neck crack. "How do you know?"

"The same way you do. You could see it in her eyes." Kagome's own eyes went distant for a minute, and there was a dreamy smile plastered on her lips, crinkling the edges of her emerald gaze, and then she laughed. "She'll be back."

Aeron hesitated, faltered for a brief minute, tripping over the truths on his tongue, and much to his chagrin, a vague, low heat rose to his cheeks.

"She kissed me."

Kagome's smiled faded into something genuine and understanding, and said again, "Of course she did, Aeron," and reached out and gave his arm a reassuring squeeze. "She will be back, well and fine. Nothing could have taken her away that wasn't of the utmost importance."

"I know," he returned wearily.

"I'm going back to the house to wash the mutt," she intoned sternly, glaring down the corgi sitting on her feet. When she looked up again her eyes still held that warm affectionate light, and when she spoke her voice was knowing and soft. "It will be alright, Aeron. You'll see."

And then she turned on her heel and left him, whistling for Ajax to follow. To her retreating back he breathed a truth he had yet to believe.

"I know it will."

And then tried his best to forget about insecurities and the great wide world his Suzu had wandered into.

* * *

The winds across the mountains were gathering force, wailing high and strong. It might have been frightening had the gale carried intent of ill will. As it was, it did not. It was merely strong and powerful, sweeping and grand. It owned the mountainside, was the king in the snowy, shadowy domain.

Around a craggy outcropping, inside the basin of rock, where a ravine split the rough hewn land in two, just before a snow covered red bridge arching up over the chasm between two halves of a whole, the wind surged. It churned and twisted into a perfect sphere, the force of the element so great that the wind was nearly visible.

Dark swathes of fabric appeared and were gone. Again and again, as the wind swirled, the place inside the sphere bent and morphed, gained volume and depth. It flickered like an image on top of a rolling wave, and the pressure in the air rocketed, was pulled so taut and tight that the earth creaked and groaned underneath the enormous power. Like a string, a wire, the energy narrowed, confined to a beam of space, rooted in between the churning winds.

And then the power snapped, and in the midst of the dusting snow and whipping gale, a figure ripped the air in two, fell down on exhausted knees, heaving unsteady gulps of air.

Trembling fingertips dug into the cold snow and sharp rocks beneath. A dark head bowed to the ground, sank further into the biting ice crystals, and shallow drifts. The shuddering breathing thundered on, were breathy sobs of pain and anguish. Magic slipped and bled out from underneath splayed fingers, trickling down into the earth. Beads of sweat slipped off the down turned face, wept from behind clenched eyes.

Upon a distant slope where rocks and snow met a great edifice there was movement, a shuffling of loose rock and wall. The towering monastery was shaded in grey, and the great walls that soared up high were nothing but skeletons, open air and jutting beams. The sun winked behind the leveled floors and the blown out walls, over fallen balconies and caved in rooftops.

The great wooden gate etched with magic swung on its broken hinges as a tall, dark man slipped between the boulders and the foundations, ran over the snow and slipped down the precarious pathway, covered in ice and frozen blood.

He ran over the carmine bridge, weak and collapsing, loosening boards as his feet thumped across the path. Before his feet halted, he was on his knees, sliding across the frozen ground to stop at her doubled and bent side.

"Suzu."

She reached a shaking hand outward, and he caught it in his own. She did not have breath for speech, but it did not matter. He knew her, and she was safe. Weak, but safe.

Her vision dimmed under the great pressure and surging power within her incapacitated body, and it was all she could do not to slip behind her eyes and fall into sweet, beckoning unconsciousness.

"Suzu, are you alright?"

She managed a nod of the head, her fingers squeezing the hand with what strength she could muster.

"We should go back into the monastery," he murmured to himself, his head rising as he looked up and above the lips of the rocky basin, high above their heads.

His dark eyes narrowed on the sun tipped snowcaps and for a moment he held himself absolutely still, listening to the high shriek of the wind. And then the moment passed and he relaxed, allowed himself to worry over the woman huddled into the ground.

"Come," he said, ignoring the feeble protests falling somewhere in between her shaking breaths.

They made their slow way across the failing bridge, up the slope to the broken threshold, and through the gates to the dilapidated and upturned courtyard. Beneath their feet the frozen ground rose in broken fragments, upturned and jutting, a testament to the powerful magic of the Western Warlord. In shadowy corners of the open courtyard, strips of jagged black fabric drifted, caught on fragmented wooden walls and beams, fallen from the heights.

Suzu paused and looked out over the destruction, her face blank, her eyes reflecting the ruination rising upwards to the sky. The man paused, and let her look over the remains of the holy place, the last traces of powerful magic and the men who had wielded it.

Though she said nothing, and there was no change in her outward appearance, he felt her sag and fall, felt the realization hit her as she stood stock and still by his side.

"Who are you?" She asked faintly, an after thought to more pressing matters.

He looked down at her, but her eyes remained fastened to the highest peak, the still whole columns, and red roof, alight with the setting sun.

"I am the son of the Blacksmith."

She closed her eyes.

"And I am the daughter of the Mage."

They said no more and took shelter from the wind, the ice, the snow, the shadows crawling across the mountain, and the past, pressing in above and around them, threatening to swallow them whole.

* * *

The sun was bright and the air was warm and sticky. Somewhere in the far distance it was raining. Kagome could smell the moisture on the wind. But where she stood it was bright, and underneath the canopy of leaves the sunlight flickered in a merry dance, throwing patterns across the forest floor, sparks before her eyes.

The winding path she traveled led upwards and around the mansion, but she had started on the path hours prior, was probably nearing the edges of Sesshoumaru's domain. It unnerved her a little, to think that she might have already wandered outside his safe protection. But that couldn't be true, because if she had, she held no misconceptions that a petulant man would come bounding after her to haul her back to the house, complaining about her straying ways.

She could tell that Inuyasha was within a safe distance, enough to give her space, but not too far to keep her from his sight and sense. She could feel Sesshoumaru, too, registering at the edge of her mind.

He was more likely to give her space, but just as likely to appear the moment she wandered too far.

This had proven true both physically and metaphorically.

She had not only taken to meandering the paths of the forest, losing herself in the leaves and grass, but also to wandering the paths in her head, pondering quietly to herself, grasping for some meaning and truth behind all the riddles and clues.

So far she had not found much, if anything, that would begin their quest for the jewel. That did not, however, mean that she was perfectly at ease. In fact, she was quite the opposite.

Vague emotions troubled her, bubbled up from within and fleeted away as soon as she stopped to examine them. There was an anxious worry that coiled just beneath her smiles and her reassurances to her friends. And based on their continuous questions regarding her state of well being, they sensed it, too.

But they were strange emotions and thoughts that swam around her and threaded through every conscious thought. They were too removed to grab hold of and memorize, but they whispered along her spine and curled in the shell of her ear, sang softly to her when she slept and drifted their way into her dreams, turning them into patches of history and possible futures, realities that were skewed and strange.

Although the thought of finding the jewel was foreboding, the idea itself did not frighten Kagome. It was not the understanding that they were the ones to complete history, to find the tiny fragment of magic that had irrevocably changed the course of the future. It was that Kagome, former museum assistant Kagome, was the Shikon Jewel, and she had no idea how that was possible, or what, really, that meant.

Kagome was, actually, very near declaring everyone else insane, and moving along about her merry way, content to forget the truth that the Mage had spoke, the lie Sesshoumaru had yet to claim untrue, the future that Kaede had affirmed.

Kagome was the Shikon Jewel, and she had no idea what that meant to the world, to their quest, or to her.

Being named something great and powerful did not make her so, and she was left feeling rather betrayed and hollow, in the wake of such insinuations. After all, she had thought it spoke volumes about her character, uprooting her life and taking the word of a man who claimed to be a famous and deadly warrior. She had done all that, then, the believing and changing and had grown stronger and more capable, had changed so fully that she wondered if she would recognize the assistant in the museum if she saw her on the street. And yet, here she was, wandering through Sesshoumaru's lands because she just could not wrap her head around 'being the Shikon jewel'.

Of all the bloody things to be.

The Shikon Jewel, which, of course, no one knew anything about. And, if they did, they were not saying anything. Kagome looked northwards, in the direction she assumed Kaede to be, and frowned furiously.

There was no getting around it though. Unless, maybe, the Mage appeared from wherever he had gone off to, after his death, and declared it to be all one grand mistake. And then maybe after that Kaede would stride by and apologize for confusing her for another dark haired former museum assistant who was tangled up with demons and warriors.

Not likely, but Kagome was allowed to hope.

Over her head the trees began to sway, as through the heavy, humid day, a breeze began to swirl. The storms were coming closer, but it seemed they were in no hurry, content to rumble on the distance and darken the far away horizon. Through the moving trees, Kagome caught sight of the building thunderheads that began to stretch across the sky, reaching toward the high bright orb shinning down upon her.

She paused, wondering if she should turn back before it rained. But, she reasoned, no one had ever died from a little natural exposure, and so she walked on, keeping to Sesshoumaru's side of the forest, distantly aware of Inuyasha, still trailing far behind her.

It was not until the wind began to churn again, to whip the dead leaves beneath her feet upwards in to the air, that she pulled herself from reverie and thought, and looked at the sky again. The day had grayed considerably, and with each passing second the wind pushed harder through the woods. She winced as grass and underbrush was flung high into the air, tossed into her face. Her dark hair streamed over her shoulder and across her eyes. The skirt she wore caught and dragged at her knees and the gale plucked at the loose edges of her shirt.

And in the echo of the summer storm, in the whispering winds, she heard the vague and indistinct sounds, like voices from far away, humming into her ear. At her chest the Bell swung, sounding a light tune, and through her clothes, she could feel the Vajra warm as each spike and spindle of the tiny metal object began to glow.

The feeling started as a ripple, like a rock thrown in a pond, and Kagome, standing in the middle of the forest, was far on the other side of the water, catching the remnants of the undulating tones, the whispering winds. Like a shiver up her spine, the faint awareness that she was being watched, that someone, something, somewhere, was aware of her, froze her to the spot.

It was different, the sensation she was caught in, than anything she had experienced thus far. It was not a vision, it was not the eyes of an enemy that roved over her, it was not a threat she heard in the wind. It was far and distant, removed, _other_. It was something so foreign and alien that she could not name it, but knew, innately, that she had to find it, catch it, and keep it close, before it slipped away and was lost forever.

Steeling her nerve, she turned in a slow circle, trying, desperately, to catch hold of the words sighing in the breeze, to find the place of their origin. In darkness and shadow, underneath the swaying trees, the sounds swirled and tumbled.

There was no room for hesitance, but, after all, she had learned bravery from the best. In the moment it took her to locate the direction of the wind, Kagome was off and running into the gusts of air, down the rolling land, through the piles of leaves and grass. Her skirt swept about her knees, her shoes pounded into the uneven ground beneath. About her the wind intensified, and with it the unintelligible words and voices, reflecting from far away, pulling her through the woods. She weaved through the trees, stumbled over fallen branches, lost all connections with the world around her, forgot where she was, what she was running for.

And then she was in the midst of a darkened glade, the trees about her nearly bending in half with the force of the wind. In a little circle of grey light, the woman paused, chest heaving, breath escaping her in heavy exhalations. Her bright eyes danced around, searched in vain for some tangible place or being, something to anchor the sensations to.

But there was no one, nothing but the trees and the earth and the sky above, darkening with the storm. With a crack of thunder, the torrent was released, a downpour of cool, hazy rain. As the first drop hit her shoulder, the ethereal sounds began to fade, were muted into the world. They sank against the earth, like the rain, ran down the hills and valleys, softened until there was nothing but Kagome, sure of the magical existence pervading the air.

Against her drenched shirt, the Bell and Vajra continued to hum. Cool rainwater slipped into her eyes, but Kagome remained frozen, straining to hear something over the patter of the downpour.

The dull thump of her heart echoed loudly, thundered in her ears. She blinked once, and as thunder rumbled again her awareness flickered and tunneled. The echo on the wind was almost gone, ebbing, slowly unraveling and drifting away.

Her heart still hammered in her chest, and a prickling sensation wound up her spine and needled her hands, lax at her sides. Adrenaline waned, left her with cold fear and the aching knowledge that she had found something great and unknown.

The presence on the wind slipped further from her, was rolling away over the earth.

"Stop," she whispered, the soft command swallowed by the wind and rain.

She felt _it_ pause and consider her. Like a casual glance, the wind swept past, tasting her intent. It was a dismissive gust of power from the indeterminate, hazy dominion, and Kagome looked upward into the trees, darkened with shadow. Things unseen and intangible shifted, sighed in collective unison, began to retreat again, slip away like smoke and mist.

"_I said stop_."

Her voice thundered, louder than the wind and the rain and the thunder above. The air changed, moved again, settled in mild surprise. Distantly, Kagome wondered why everyone, be they warlord or untouchable wind thing, had to underestimate her.

The squall swept past again, cascading her with the cool summer rain. In each current she could hear a question, soft and remote. With great, painstaking care, Kagome reached for the Bell and Vajra at her neck, and gripped it between her dripping fingertips. Underneath her hand the Bell chimed once, reverberated out into the world, purifying each sound that drifted past.

For a sliver of time, barely more than a fraction of a second, she caught the voices within the stormy winds, and as the sound and vibration faded from beneath her calloused palm, the utterances fell again, were just out of reach.

She lifted her hand off of her chest, brought the necklace and baubles with it. Anticipation and anxious excitement curled in her stomach and weakened her knees. She paused, held her hand steady to ring the Bell, once more, just once more-

"Kagome."

With a gasp, the woman turned, the silver jewelry falling free from her hands, the sounds on the wind lost in her surprise and sudden lash of fear.

Sesshoumaru stepped out of the darkness, eyes trained on her face.

In her ear, Kagome heard the ringing farewell on the wind, and she turned, desperate, stretching out her fingers.

"Wait!"

But it was gone, whatever it had been, and with it went her strange control, her narrowed focus.

She cursed harshly under her breath and turned to face the warrior once again. He was watching her with narrowed, suspicious eyes. Kagome laughed dully and shook her head, her own eyes falling to the steadily muddying ground beneath her feet.

"What are you doing?" He sounded amused, though when she glanced up at him from beneath her dark, spiked lashes, he looked far from it.

"I hardly know."

"Mm," he hummed, stepping forward to look out into the woods in the direction she had faced. He was silent as he scanned the trees and pocketed shadows. "I hope you are not falling into old habits."

"Old habits?" She asked, incredulous, furious with him, that he had interrupted something so important, so relieved that he had, so unbelievably reassured now that he was beside her.

"Getting into trouble," he responded, still looking deep into the depths of the wild.

Kagome laughed, the sound muted and hollow under the sound of the rain. Satisfied with his sweep of the forest, he turned back to her, eyed her carefully.

"I doubt I'll ever be out of trouble."

"That is not unexpected. Merely irksome." His eyes lost their humor then, his face sharpening as it lost the last vestiges of a hidden smile. "What were you doing, Kagome?"

She looked away from him, a deep sigh escaping her lips, a dark frown passing over her face, shading it in further grey light. The rain continued to fall, but neither the warrior nor the woman moved.

Softly, she asked, "When did this quest change from sword to something more?"

She felt him tense, and the air became strained. They danced around the edges of things unspoken, but real and true. She could feel him watching her, could almost see him leafing through his choices, his answers, his actions, discarding each as they swelled in his mind.

He stood very close. Turned away, eyes down cast, she could still catch sight of him, now as drenched as she, just at the corner of her gaze. He did not move, but she could feel him hesitate in his indecision. And then his hand was moving, reaching out to touch across her jaw. He tugged her head up, and she blinked against the rain.

"On the Roof of the World."

Her smile returned, but it was bittersweet and tinged with vacant emotions, tremulous and unsteady.

"What were you doing?" He asked again, so low and deep that she hardly hear him.

She looked over her shoulder and into the dark depths of the wild land, and his fingers fell away from her skin as she turned.

"Getting into trouble."

She felt his eyes on her, boring into her, measuring her up, disbelieving. He was bright and sharp against the haze from the rain, was commanding and powerful. He could make her say, they both knew. But instead he took her wrist in his hand, and began the long trudge back to his home, far in the distance.

With a final look around the forest, Kagome followed him, and tried her best to ignore the whispering wind at her back, the questions that fell behind her heavy footsteps, the rise of quiet absolute power, curling up and out, watching her leave, parting the woods and the air as she followed the man who cut and killed.

And in the moments before the echo disappeared she thought she heard laughter on the wind, in the rain upon her face.

* * *

The rain continued to pour and the occasional rumble of thunder rocked the windows in the walls. Each time the sharp sounds clapped above, a corgi with overly developed hearing went running for cover. Unfortunately, cover always seemed to be near Sesshoumaru. By mid afternoon, the warlord was becoming increasingly agitated with the skittish dog, but, really, he only had himself to blame for the fuzzy anchor at his feet. He had extended the olive branch between the creature and himself, too long ago to change his mind, now, when the thing decided to take advantage of his patience.

Kagome surely wouldn't take kindly to him killing it. Not when he had put on such an excellent front. Not when she had accused him of liking the dwarfish dog. So Sesshoumaru settled for feeling mildly disgruntled and ruffled, but left the four-legged nightmare sit where it pleased.

Sighing, the man looked out into the rainstorm, pondering the melancholy surrounding his house. There was something quite off about the rain and the wind today. It was fuzzy and indistinct, but always keen and perceptive. The subtle changes did not slip him by. He had spent the better part of his day, after collecting Kagome, staring out into the watery afternoon, letting his power ebb and flow, catching and grasping at the fringes of impalpable things.

It unsettled him to be in the dark. It exasperated him that Kagome refused to answer simple questions. And it nettled him that her dog would not leave him alone. It also, he realized rather suddenly, infuriated him that she was not near enough to answer his questions or remove her dog from his person.

Abruptly, Sesshoumaru stood and Ajax jumped away and ran out into the hall, ears pinned down to his tawny head. The tall man followed the dog through the empty halls, through shadows tinged with rain. In the long hallway connected to the room that housed his extensive collections of books, warm light glowed and spilled out into the hall.

Sesshoumaru approached the room and pushed open the door to the library, frowning at the puddles of water, a messy trail to the farthest recesses of the scholarly study. Around the corner of a shelf, down the aisle between towering books and tomes, he found her, pouring over an aged book, hands skimming the brittle pages, damp hair streaming down her back.

He hovered, watched her eyes as they darted across the pages, her calloused hands fly from book to book, piled high, each open to a specific page. Around her the low light flickered and cast her in orange hues. Beneath her bare feet there were small pools of water, running across his perfectly kept floors.

His frown deepened.

"You are dripping onto my floor and very expensive, priceless books."

Kagome hardly batted an eyelash. "You're rich, you can buy more."

Sesshoumaru eyed the floor distastefully and stepped over the slick wood, weaving a careful trail to her side.

"They are priceless, Kagome, because they cannot be found nor bought, anywhere else. I would think a former anthropology student would understand their great import."  
He raised a disdained eyebrow, "Did I not tell you to warm yourself and dry off?"

Kagome shook her head and he caught the small smile on her lips, but in a moment she was bending over a book, her damp hair falling onto the pages. Sesshoumaru's hands snaked forward and removed the book from impending doom. With a forefinger and thumb, he held the book above the floor, watching morosely as tiny beads of water slipped off the leather bound cover.

"I need that," she exhaled in exasperation, reaching for the book. He held it further from her, thumbing through the pages, checking for damage.

"You may have it back when I have deemed you competent of use."

Kagome sighed and leaned back from the table. "I'm sorry. I _was_ in the middle of showering when I was struck with sudden insight." She looked down at her shirt and the damp spots that clung to her skin. "I suppose I could have paid more attention to what I was dripping on…but," she exclaimed, reaching over his shoulder, deftly picking the book out of his clawed grasp, "I think I may be onto something."

More displeased than curious, Sesshoumaru leveled her a sour look.

She ignored him.

"I've been thinking-"

"That is hardly news-"

She blundered on, "-about the Jewel and how it could be connected to us, the sword, to everything. Miroku believed that the Shikon no Tama encompassed more than the four Shinto souls. He thought it was the earth itself. Kaede led us to Miroku, but I led us to Kaede. And I am the Shikon Jewel." Laughter caught in her throat and colored her words much lighter than they were meant to be. "Or so they say."

She leafed through the book she had taken from his hands and tapped her fingers against the aged typeface. Turning the book around she held it up to his face.

"The Shikon Jewel, the center of many legends and little real, concrete truth. You said it yourself, Sesshoumaru, most legends are wrong, especially regarding the gem. Even Kaede doesn't know where it came from."

"So she says," Sesshoumaru felt the need to interject.

Kagome nodded brusquely and deposited the book in his hands. "What little I can read about the jewel hasn't helped me much." She gestured to the book in his hands. "It's mentioned in various fairy tales, some historical accounts, and I'm sure you could name a few of the other texts -that I can't read- in which it appears."

"There are several. However, it is not always called 'Shikon no Tama'."

Kagome looked up and pointed at him, "Exactly! That's what I thought. Which, also didn't help me much, until I realized."

"What? What did you realize?"

She spread her hands wide, fingers grazing over the open books before her. "That everything _is_ connected. It doesn't make sense half the time. It isn't even fathomable. But think. The sword was found at the Shikon Site, a place where you fought a denizen of the demon, where you collected the last shard to complete the jewel. The place where Kaede's great tree resides. You followed a sword that had disappeared with the jewel, to god only knows where, and found me, holed up in a museum. Me, a museum assistant, with a penchant for fairytales, and the belief that the world holds great secrets.

"You knew I had some sense, some great almighty something, that set me apart from everyone else. You knew that I saw the world differently. And the sword demanded that I come with you, back here, where everything began. But Aeron was there, Sesshoumaru, he was at the museum years before I was. And now he's here, too. But as far as we know, the only reason he is here is because the Mage died, because we ascended a mountain to find information and because he sacrificed himself to save us."

Her words died and the excitement fled from her face. Suddenly she was pale and grey, and when she spoke again he heard the uncertainty and fear that she rarely gave into, that she hated to admit to.

"He died to save us and gave up his power because we were supposed to climb back down a mountain, we were meant to find the second Mage, to collect his daughter, to save the wood spirit, to end up back at the beginning. If Kaede had died," she paused, and her hands fell to the table, clenching against its edges, "Aeron would not have the staff. And Suzu might not have left her home."

She blinked and looked away from him, up into the large window, splattered with the down pouring rain. "I don't know what is meant or fated to happen next, but I know, better now, what Kaede meant when she told us to complete the whole. I knew that events were connected, that there was meaning behind everything, I just… It was much easier to pretend there wasn't some almighty interaction between everything. I feel like I can almost see the future, like it hovers before me, but it's in a form I can't comprehend. Each moment is a thread and they're all connected, but I can't seem to find which to pull and which to weave."

She trailed off and the sound of revelation was drowned out by the thunder overhead, the whimper around her feet. Kagome met Sesshoumaru's gaze again and reached out to touch the book in his hands.

"The Mage _was_ right. It is the earth. The jewel is the land and the elements. I don't know why I didn't question it sooner, but I…"

"Question what?"

Her brow drew down over her eyes, throwing them into shadow. "There were times, I think, that it influenced our quest, that it intervened. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong, but I swear I have felt something great and moving, something other and completely indescribable."

"When?"

A troubled look passed through her eyes, and he watched as teeth flashed out along her lower lip. "When I destroyed the cliff face. And on the Roof of the World, when I was on the heights. Just before our enemies broached the walls. I heard voices on the wind, in my soul. At the time I attributed them to the sword. I had nothing else to compare them with. I think there might have been other times, but I can't be certain."

Sesshoumaru looked down at the book in between his fingers, his eyes flashing across the word- _Shikon_- printed over and over down the page. With a careless, flippant gesture he threw the book back on the tabletop.

"Of course there have been other times."

She raised an eyebrow at the mockery interlaced in his words, but they were not directed at her. He sighed, and his golden eyes slid shut, and unbidden, the memory if his silent trek through the great expanse of green land, rose in his mind.

Kagome had not been the only one influenced by the unnamed. After all, _it_ had compelled him to find her, when she seemed lost to the world.

"What then," he asked lazily, his eyes sliding back open to regard her, "are you suggesting?"

"You asked me what I was doing out in your forest. I was listening to the wind. And I think it can lead us."

"To the jewel."

"To the Jewel," she affirmed.

"When?"

A mild shrug and a shake of the head. "I don't know. Soon? Whenever you best see fit. I don't think there is any urgency. Not yet. I could be wrong, but I think we are safe- saf_er_," she corrected herself sharply, "than before. As long as we are careful, as long as our enemies don't find out our secrets we still possess the advantage. I think," she murmured slowly, glancing out at the waving green treetops through the rain splattered window, "that the jewel is mentioned many times, that it has been in many stories and many tales, and that through time, it has gained its reputation." She smiled and looked back at him, and pointed down at the books, "The wind, the earth, anything that might be linked to natural life. I think its all connected, and," her smile slid off her face and she suddenly looked so very young, "even if it doesn't begin with me, it might end with here," she tapped her chest and tried to summon a smile, but her worry kept it away.

Sesshoumaru looked down at her, the apprehension drawn into the soft curve of her face, the duty weighing down her shoulders, the impossible task laid before her. It was difficult not to marvel at her resilience, but in that moment he did not wish to look upon her with admiring eyes. He did not want to favor her for her strength and her capability.

Not for what she shouldered.

She looked _weary_.

Concern rose and coiled, a sharp reminder in the back of his suddenly distracted head. She would break so easily. For all her determination and endurance, she would shatter and end, if pushed too hard, too far, if she fell.

Yes, it was difficult not to admire her for that strength she possessed, so different from the clinging sufferance she had once possessed. But Sesshoumaru did not care.

Because he did not need magic and evil and quests and swords to remind him of his attachment to her. He liked her best, safe and clever, alive and well, right where she was.

So it was with little hesitance that he said, "We will wait," and decided that they could afford a day or two, before they tried to change the world all over again.

"Alright," she agreed, her voice a whisper, without hesitance, her eyes holding his steady gaze, "we'll wait."

And then she reached out, traced two fingers against his cheek, along the two sharp, distinct lines of his face, and let her hand fall, calloused fingertips dancing along his wrist, dusting across the backs of his knuckles, brushed past him, and slipped from his grasp out the door and into the shadows.

He looked out into the storm, the rain and the world, and closed his eyes against the ghost of fingers, the touch of gratitude, branded into memory and history, the living proof that a warlord had broken and fallen from untouchable solitude.


	41. A Moment Suspended

For anyone who reads this, thanks is due to the people who reviewed this last time around. You have no idea how incredibly close I was to deleting this story from both sites. Luckily, the few comments I did receive let me know that this is not a cosmic waste of my time. So thanks to you, for assuring me 300,000 words have not been squandered.

* * *

My, those quiet eyes become you. 

-The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, _Turn Into_

**Chapter 41**

**A Moment Suspended**

When Kagome met Sesshoumaru and had become inexplicably caught up in an epic battle to reclaim a sword, which subsequently led to meeting a stubborn half brother, watching the death of a powerful sorcerer, saving a wood spirit, coming to terms with the sorcery of her former colleague, and learning to leave her beloved pet behind, she had never quite counted on the addition of unsettling dreams and nightmares that plagued her one real and true chance to escape from reality.

But as time rolled on, it had become increasingly clear that while her days were filled with adventure and bloody battles, mystery and giant Taisho induced headaches, so were her nights to be filled with scraps of memory and indescribable imagery, fear and flickering dread.

Her sleep hours swung on a pendulum between indifferent emotions and tumultuous terror. When she woke the memories slipped away like shadows before the sunrise, remained just out of her conscious reach, only to return, at night, when behind her eyes she fell into dark.

That night, with the rain still thundering a reverberating rhythm against the mansion, the windowpane across the room, Kagome found sleep disconcerting and distasteful. And rather than wake every hour, heart racing, adrenaline spiked, she kicked off the covers to the enormous bed, slipped passed a snoring Ajax and made her way through the silent hallways of the house.

There was only one thing that could beckon her from her bed, sleep or no, and it was the giant, industrial fridge, humming pleasantly in Sesshoumaru's overly clean kitchen. But as she approached, she saw that she was not the only one avoidant of sleep. Light drifted out into the corridor, fell upon her tired eyes. She could hear the clatter of glass bowls and drawers, the sound of metal falling against the countertops.

Padding her way to the doorway she faltered, eyes widening at the sight laid out before her.

Aeron Michaels stood in the center of the kitchen, his hair a mess, a streak of flour across his nose, and in his large hand a fork poised to delve into the large chocolate cake, freshly baked and frosted, sitting prettily on the marble island.

They stared at one another, frozen in the other's gaze, before he gave a visible start, reached down into a drawer, pulled out another utensil, and held it out to her.

"Does a body good," he coaxed.

That was all the incentive she needed.

She walked across the kitchen, accepted the proffered fork and took a bite. They stood in silence, mulling over the cake, until finally, Kagome said, not without a hint of playful sarcasm, "You are a man of many surprising talents, Aeron."

He snorted and stabbed his fork into the center of the cake. "Am I?"

"Closet archeologist, cake baker, mage. What more can we expect from you?"

He laughed and leaned against the counter, blowing at the flour dusting the countertop. "Lemon bars maybe? I'm quite adept at those as well."

"You'll make an excellent househusband someday," she told him seriously.

"I'd hoped as much. If any woman ever wants her dojo blown up, I'm her man."

"Not many dojos in the states."

"No, but I hear they have them around these parts."

A moment of unsteady silence passed and Kagome chewed absently on the edge of her fork, watching him from behind guarded eyes. He sighed and cast her a frank look.

"I couldn't sleep. You?"

"I didn't want to seep."

"Nightmares?" He asked knowingly.

"Not at all. I wanted some of this delicious cake."

Aeron sighed and leaned against a stool, eyeing the dessert with disdain. "My father hated most of my hobbies. I was almost embarrassingly un-Michaels-ish. Never could deny the appeal of those lemon bars though," he added softly, a sharp laugh curling in his words. He glanced up at the woman on the other side of the island strewn with dirty bowls and chocolate covered spatulas. "I used to cook all the time, at home, in my apartment. It was pretty lonely though. No one to share it with."

Kagome looked down at the counter, her fingers tracing through the shallow dusting of flour. "She's going to come back, Aeron."

"I know," he murmured, voice hardly above a whisper, "it doesn't mean that I don't miss her though."

"I know," she soothed.

He cleared his throat sharply and quickly turned away from her, reaching up into the cupboards. "Want some water?"

"Yes, thank you."

He filled a glass and slid it across the tabletop, effectively dispelling his admission from the air. She sipped carefully and waited for him to gather himself.

"Kagome." Their eyes met over the rim of her glass. "What do you dream about?"

With great care, she lowered the cup from her lips and set it on the table, a strange and unexplainable feeling of foreboding rising up to thread through limbs.

"Many things. Not all of which I can accurately name."

"You have nightmares often though. Especially before we saved Kaede."

Kagome ran a finger around the dampened edge of her water glass, watching the faint reflection of her skin dance along its pristine transparency.

"I dream a lot now," she answered simply. "Mostly of abstract things, feelings, ideas. I don't think I could describe them if I tried."

He watched her carefully, his dark eyes trained on her face. Uneasy, she shifted her attention back to her drink.

"I have dreams too."

"Oh?"

He nodded and his dark, unkempt hair fell into his eyes. It had grown far past the carefully manicured and coiffed style of an accountant, the buttoned down man she had once known. Kagome was suddenly struck by the undeniable realization that he was a powerful man, a mage, a sorcerer. That someday, he might be the one to hold hell open with his hands, to help toss a wretched soul inside.

Of course he would have nightmares, she thought, feeling foolishly naïve and selfish. Of course he would struggle under the magnitude and weight of his choices, his part in their journey.

"I suppose you would," she murmured quietly, feeling incredibly thoughtless and stupid.

He gave her a reassuring smile and spoke again, haltingly and hesitantly. "This might sound incredibly juvenile, and I think you said it much better, the other day, when we were in the forest, but…" he faltered and his grin faded to a lopsided smile, that same old light returning to his eyes. "I'm glad I'm here too, nightmares or no. And," he paused, and she saw the dry humor and wit twinkle in his eyes, "I'm glad we are friends, even if I had to come across the world to make it so."

Kagome watched him, marveled at the devilish smile, one that reminded her so very much of the sorcerer who had passed on. "I am too."

And suddenly she was very tired, exhausted and careworn.

"Go to bed," he said.

So she did. And when she woke she could not remember a single dream, a momentary nightmare.

* * *

The sea was placid that night. The deep, dark water reflected the gentle glow of the half moon, hanging high in the majestic sky. The stars were dull in the wake of the waxing moon. 

It might have been a beautiful sight if the eyes gazing over the scene had not belonged to a demoness huddling near the lapping waves on the rocky shore. She teetered on the edge of the jutting shoreline, occasionally throwing a surreptitious glance over her shoulder. The rolling waves of putrid evil spewed out from within the cave, tinged the night air until it was so rancid and caustic and she nearly threw herself into the sea to escape.

Heaving a shuddering breath, Kagura rose to her feet and drifted nearer to the split in the cliff face. Her sensitive ears caught the high hum of power, tripping along the night air, buzzing and twining, coiling and furrowing. The light from the depths of the hidden alcove danced its way to the ground at her feet, throwing shadows around as if they were living creatures, trying to escape form the makeshift forge within.

The sound of a hammer penetrated the soft night, and with every smash of metal, sparks of the malleable, sinister power ricocheted around the cave. Powerful magic was ripping the air in two, compressing it under the weight of terrible sorcery.

Never before had the wind demoness seen two men so seeped in evil and never before had she seen the lengths to which they would go to win, to survive, to ensure that the power remained.

Innate curiosity had propelled her into the shadows before the forges, one night, when the moon was hidden and the sea roared its fury. In the twisted dark she had waited, as she had the one other night she dared to disobey her orders.

But this time it was different.

Onigumo gave no indication that he had seen her or felt her presence; for all that she was huddled ten feet away. Instead, he remained, as she had never seen him before.

Kneeling.

In the darkest shadow that he could find, where the light fell short and the licking flames of the fire dared not fall, she could see the hunched figure of the demon, shifting and moving along the floor.

With every labored intake of breath she caught the red of his eyes bleeding out over his face. The crimson mingled with ebony, pooling beneath his down turned face. The sleeves of his dark majestic kimono were shredded past his wrists, revealing the pale skin of his fingers and hands, digging into the soft earth beneath his prone body. His head swayed, his magic rolled up and off his shoulders, sucked through the air and toward the forges, ablaze with unnatural fire.

Each burst of sorcery infused with the flames, fanned the fires until they rose up high along the cold stonewalls. The bent shape of the blacksmith flickered through the light, his shadow twisting around beneath his feet. Unintelligible words fell from his lips, old and ancient, each laced with unimaginable power and dark, sinister intent. The rolling fury inside the tiny cavern was enough to make her lungs constrict, her eyes widen from the unspeakable horrors that she saw, stretched out in the flames.

The mortal blacksmith raised his hands, sharpened his tools, spoke down to the demon crouched on the floor, his life force and majesty slowly leaving him, dripping away like wax from a candlestick, like the side of a mountain under torrential rain.

He was in excruciating pain, the demon, the master of the darkness, the being who had defeated death, who had walked back through the graying gates to reclaim life and victory. She could hear it in his curses, silent, raging inside his head. She could feel it in the slipping power he lorded over her.

She watched as he bared his teeth, as a guttural, muted roar was ripped from his chest. She cowered behind the shadows, wrapped herself inside of them, grasped for an anchor, for safety.

The blood thickened, the earth trembled. The glow of unformed metal appeared through the fires.

The blacksmith looked up from his work, eyes sweeping past the demon with a disinterested glance to land on Kagura, trembling in her corner.

And when the dark eyes of the forger, reflecting the billowing agony of the demon, the rising flames of the forge, rose to meet the vermillion eyes of the wind demoness, she stumbled backward, clawed and crawled her way from the wicked rise of sorcery suddenly exploding through the cave. With a sharp cry and a cursed utterance, she scrambled out of the dark confines and into the freeing night. And there she had stayed.

She had not dared wander back into that tiny hole, that glimpse into hell. She had died once, had experienced agony, but nothing had been so twisted and wretched, wrong and depraved, as the magic and power that blacksmith possessed and the desires of her master, laid out across the dirty floor of a cave, hidden by the sea.

Kagura looked back toward the moving ocean and its gentle waves. A steady undulation of power rippled out from behind her, steadily growing in intensity. It was like an anchor to the unsteady and surrounding power that dwelled within the rock and stone of that small crypt. Sharp pricks of awareness ran along her spine, dragging cold shudders behind them.

Onigumo's magic was flowing faster with each passing moment. As if floodgates had been broken, the power spilled forth, overwhelmed the space inside the cavern. Kagura pivoted on her heel, reached within her kimono and dragged out the intricately designed fan, heavy and laden with magic. Darkness spilled out of the crack in the rock, burst forth and threaded out into the night. Shards of shadow rocketed toward her, erupted before her eyes.

With a deft flick of the wrist the fan moved, parted the power rushing toward her and sent it glancing off above and around her body. In the rush of power careening around her, she heard the echo of an animalistic scream tinged with rage, fury, hatred, and a dark depth that she could not fathom. Her ebony hair whipped over her face and eyes, was pulled up into the maelstrom of power, blasting toward the open sea.

Her heartbeat quickened as the howl deepened, stretched and yawned, enveloping the demoness, cutting off the rest of the world. At her feet, outside the gentle lull of her protective spell, the darkness rose and lapped out over the swelling ocean.

Fear rooted her in place, a warped fascination holding her steady under the brunt of the assault.

And then, just as swiftly as it had unfolded, the dark power whirled past, was drawn back into the cave. Inside, as the last tendril of sorcery disappeared, she heard the sound of the hammer, beating against hot metal. Soon it was a steady beat, and with each falling stroke, the wicked malevolent forces were hewn and wrought, morphed into tapering points and sharpened edges.

And at the edge of the ocean, under the gentle light from the moon, bound to the damned demon, a wicked soul prayed for redemption.

* * *

"Supplies?" 

"Supplies."

Inuyasha paused and chewed over the word, rolling it and its meaning around in his head. He hesitated and then tentatively asked, his voice rising in curious disbelief, "Supplies?

"Yes, Inuyasha," Sesshoumaru barked sharply, "supplies. The definition has not changed since I first asked you to gather them."

"Well, I know, but-"

"But what?"

Inuyasha winced under the volume of his brother's voice. "But what are we preparing for?"

Immediately after the words left his mouth, Inuyasha wished he hadn't spoken. Sesshoumaru paused the hand writing across the page on his desk. With infinite patience, the warlord raised his head, his light eyes meeting Inuyasha's darker ones, trapping the younger man within the fury of his gaze.

"Inuyasha," he drawled slowly, his deep voice colored with dark humor and waning forbearance, "our enemy is a demon who has escaped from the farthest pits of the underworld. What do you think we should prepare for?"

Inuyasha fidgeted, his eyes falling to the floor.

"Uh, everything?"

"Yes."

"Prepare for everything?"

"Yes."

"Nothing specifically?"

At that moment, Inuyasha could have sworn, that had Sesshoumaru not been an incredibly stoic and restrained man, the warlord would have slapped his hand to his forehead or withdrawn his sword and run Inuyasha through. As it was, the warrior was looking more and more perturbed as the seconds ticked on.

Sesshoumaru carefully lowered the pen in his hand to lay it across the desk. His large, long fingers flexed and threaded together, sharp elbows drawing up to lean on the dark, smooth surface of the desktop.

"Very soon," he said, with agonizingly slow deliberation, "we will be leaving to search for the jewel. We do not know where we will be going. We do not know how long it will take. We do not know if we will be able to return here, to the mansion. We do not know if our enemies will track us. We do not know how long we will remain hidden from the world. We do know," he continued, in the same dangerously even voice, "that it is summer. We do know that there will be at least two people traveling with us who are not trained warriors. We know that there is a high and probable chance that we will battle. Now, Inuyasha, tell me, do you need anything more specific, or will that suffice?"

The younger Taisho brother looked up from his intense study of the carpet.

"Few supplies, enough to get us by. Right, got it. No further specifics needed."

"Excellent. Now leave my study."

Inuyasha gave a perfunctory head jolt, the nearest thing he to a bow, and turned on his heel, making his way, as quickly as possible, away from Sesshoumaru's foul mood.

So, he had earned his brother's enmity for the day and, as a result, was still more than slightly confused about what exactly he was preparing for.

Hmm.

Wonderingly, he stroked his chin.

_Kagome_.

Kagome would know what to do. Sesshoumaru talked to her, she possessed a creepy ability to know things before they happened. And he hadn't checked up on her yet today. He needed to make sure she hadn't impaled herself on her sword or wandered to the heights of a monastery.

Slipping his hands into his pockets, Inuyasha sulked his way through the mansion. Halfway to Kagome's room, he halted as a fat corgi planted itself in the middle of the corridor floor. Inuyasha's eyes narrowed and he regarded the animal with wary interest. The dog returned the look with its bright eyes, ears swiveled forward, attention centered completely on the tall man before him.

Feeling awkward, Inuyasha looked away and out a large picture window. "I guess you know we're leaving soon, huh?"

The dog cocked its head and Inuyasha half expected Ajax to say something. When the dog remained silent, Inuyasha sighed and meandered forward to drop into a squat next to the nightmare he tried to avoid at all costs. A nightmare, which recently, he had become startlingly fond of.

His hand descended to the dog's head, scratching behind his ears.

"She loves you, you know. She wouldn't leave you unless she had to. I think the only thing that could drag her away from you would be saving the world. She worries about you when we're away. You know that right?"

Ajax did nothing but lean into the scratches, his hind leg thumping an unsteady rhythm against the carpet.

"Good boy," Inuyasha murmured, gracelessly patting the corgi's head, "now show me where Kagome is."

Ajax barked an affirmation and waddled his way to the library, Inuyasha closely following his furry guide.

Kagome was settled in an overstuffed armchair, tucked in a back corner of the library. Surrounding her were piles of books and loose sheets of paper, pens and paperclips. She did not notice Inuyasha and his escort until Ajax sat on her feet, effectively breaking her concentration from the multiple texts in her lap.

Kagome looked up, startled, and her face broke into a wide grin. She reached down and gave Ajax a loving scratch before her eyes settled on Inuyasha, hovering over her stack of tomes.

"What are you doing?" He asked, picking up a book and rifling through it.

"I'm_trying_ to read legends about the wind. Unfortunately most of them are in Japanese."

"Ah. Well, this one says that the wind was an evil spirit named Fujin, who," Inuyasha squinted, and brought the book up to his nose, "liked to… eat children? Ew. Preferably with the help of the thunder god, apparently."

Kagome frowned. "Fujin? As in…?"

Inuyasha cast her a lopsided grin. "Not the same Fujin, ruler of the wind clan. You know what Sesshoumaru says about words and names. They derive their power from what others think of them. Fujin is the ancient god of the wind. Here in Japan anyway. I imagine there are lots of elemental kami who have adopted that name." He thought for a moment, looking up into the shadowy pockets of the ceiling. "I think I may have killed one or two of them, come to think of it."

He looked back at Kagome, who was shaking her head, a bewildered expression on her face. Inuyasha shrugged and moved around a stack of books to perch on the arm of her chair.

"Sesshoumaru is having me pack supplies," he started softly, staring at the table next to him, where a large piece of uneaten chocolate cake lay.

Kagome sighed and adjusted Ajax's collar. "I think we'll be leaving again soon. I think that wherever we are supposed to be, whatever we are meant to do next, the answer lies in the wind. I suppose that makes sense if you believe what Miroku said."

"That the jewel is the earth and all that comprises it?"

She nodded. "In the forest I felt a presence. It was different than the sword or the demon or anything else I have experienced before. I-"

"Are you going to eat this?"

"No, go ahead, I had some the other night."

"Thanks. You were saying?"

"Hm? Oh. I heard something in the wind, like," she faltered, grasping for the right words, "like a personality."

Inuyasha raised an eyebrow, "A personality?"

Kagome turned to regard him, tucking her legs underneath her. Her fingers tapped distractedly against the book in her lap. "Yes, but more like… the wind personified. I could _feel_ the element and what lay within. It was as if each gust of wind was a word, an extension of the great force that makes the gales and the zephyrs and the breezes."

"Hmm," Inuyasha hummed as he chewed over her cake.

"Does that make any sense to you?"

He shook his head. "No, but I'm not the Shikon Jewel or the Protector of Sesshoumaru's sword. So, I'll just take your word for it. But, I suppose you don't really know what we're preparing for either then, huh?"

She smiled softly and tapped his arm with the cover of her book. "No, no more than you. Sorry." And then her eyes narrowed on him and a sly expression washed over her face. Wary, Inuyasha regarded her over the chocolate cake he was rapidly devouring. "You put Sesshoumaru in a bad mood didn't you?"

"No!" He denied much too vehemently.

Kagome laughed. "Why would you come to ask me anyway? You're the warrior not me."

Because, Inuyasha thought, Kagome needed people to keep an eye on her. To make sure she was safe and well.

Outwardly, Inuyasha chose to ignore her slight and sniffed indignantly. "This," he announced loudly, attempting to change the subject, "is delicious cake. When did you have time to make it?"

"I didn't," she answered, standing up to stretch. "Aeron did."

When she looked back at him, Inuyasha was calmly setting the partially eaten dessert back where he found it. Sullenly, he asked, "I suppose you didn't make those lemon bars in the kitchen either?"

"Nope. I'm a horrible cook."

Inuyasha nodded in resignation and heaved a sulky sigh.

"He's not a bad man, Inuyasha. And he's certainly not trying to poison you through strategically placed baked goods. You'd quite like him if you got over your first impression. You might even become friends if you'd be halfway decent to one another."

Inuyasha laughed sharply and stood from his seat. "Not likely. Do you want to train?"

"Aren't you supposed to be getting supplies?"

"Aren't you supposed to be reading about the wind?"

"No."

"Me neither then. And afterwards we can go for a run."

She smiled and gently set her book on the empty chair. "Alright."

"Come on, Ajax."

He whistled for the dog and together they traipsed out into the sunshine, forgot about the shadows, and put off the future, for just a little while.

* * *

Kagome's breath came in heaving, rolling pants. She held her sword out before her, weight balanced carefully on the balls of her feet. A wayward lock of hair fluttered before her unblinking eyes, drifting lazily in the warm wind. She could feel the unsteady rhythm of her heart, beating against the cage of her ribs. A sheen of sweat was sprinkled across her brow, a droplet running down her temple. 

Inuyasha was frozen, staring her down, on the other side of the reconstructed dojo.

His own breath was controlled and even; eyes keen and sharp, trained on her.

Had she not known he would never hurt or harm her, the uncompromising spark in his amber eyes might have frightened her.

She waited, watched, steadied herself, steeled herself for the attack that was sure to come-

He moved, feigned to the left and darted right. He was much faster than she, but she had learned what to do to survive amongst warriors. Her sword raised, she stepped back once, twice, and the warrior barreled down at her, his own dark blade extended before him, cutting the air with furious intent.

Kagome whipped her sword forward, bracing the flat of the blade against her free palm. Her feet shifted once more, dug into the floor beneath her. Her muscles already strained and knotted, she prepared for the impact, ready to fall to the floor and roll away.

Her concentration was tied into the moment, a single string of existence, of mock battle and the life and death situations she would undoubtedly face. All focus was centered on her hands, on the place her shoulder would land when she hit the floor, how to avoid the sharp edges of a weapon.

He was a foot away, his sword swinging downward, adjusting for her defensive move. She raised her arms, gritted her teeth against the unstoppable force, and then in the span of time between the moment his sword met hers- she felt her attention snap and shatter.

In her ear, the wind whispered the faint murmurings of all things misunderstood. Her eyes drifted away from the blade arcing toward her, slipped over Inuyasha's shoulder.

Everything around them had gone oddly silent. Except for the wind, which had amplified, echoing strangely inside Kagome's head.

Words slipped by, faded in and out of reality.

She reached, straining to catch one.

The wind sighed.

_Protector._

Umber eyes widened and the man tried to change the angle of his swing.

Inuyasha's sword connected with her blade, poorly held, lax in her grip. Jarring violently, Kagome's muscles reacted, surging to fight against the strength pushing her into the ground. She fell to her knees, her left hand sliding along her sword, catching on the sharp edges, ripping open the sensitive skin of her palm. Inuyasha's sword met her shoulder, neatly slicing through her shirt to graze the skin beneath. The tip of the dark blade sank in, and a weak trickle of blood poured out from the wound.

Above her, Inuyasha gasped and withdrew the sword, removing her own blade from her hands.

"What the hell were you doing?" He snarled, throwing both weapons aside. His hands moved to sit her back, to pull at the injury on her shoulder.

Kagome frowned at her hand, weeping blood onto the floor. Inuyasha applied pressure to her shoulder and reached down to touch the wrist of her injured hand.

"I'm fine, stop worrying. It's my own fault." Impatiently, she batted away his hands. "Help me up."

Gently, he took her elbow and brought her to her feet. Kagome shook him off and walked forward out of the dojo and into the small copse of trees on the hillside. The wind was silent now, nothing but a gentle breeze, warm and thick with moisture. There was nothing in the air, nothing but the promise of more rain and the continuation of summer.

"Sesshoumaru's going to kill me," she heard Inuyasha mutter.

"Why?" She asked absently, still looking westward, straining to catch something on the wind.

Inuyasha didn't respond and when she turned to face him she felt a sudden spike in sorcery, and there, standing on the stone steps, was Sesshoumaru, his face darkened in black, frightening anger. Inuyasha physically wilted, curling into himself, staring down at the floor where a bloodstained sword lay forgotten.

Kagome opened her mouth to stave off the murder that would undoubtedly occur, but the warlord turned and fixed his gaze on her, and her voice cut itself off, dying in her throat.

"Go," he whispered to his brother, a dangerous threatening note creeping into the word. Inuyasha did not even stop to pick up his sword as he melted back into the tree line.

Sesshoumaru reached her in five purposeful strides, one hand reaching out to pluck at her wrist and hold her bleeding hand up before his eyes. His fingers were warm and strong, firm. She could taste his displeasure on the air, see it in his stiffened shoulders, the low burning anger in his eyes.

Magic seeped out, immediately staunching the flow of warm blood. Calloused fingers ran over the healed skin and a thumb pressed against the nonexistent injury, assuring him that the she had healed. He dropped her hand, letting it fall to her side, and there was enough curtness in the action to let her know he was unhappy with her too.

His hands found their way to her shoulder and with as much gentleness as he could muster, angry as he was, he ripped away the blood stained fabric of her shirt. An indignant protest started forth from her lips as those sharp extensions ripped along the seam of the shirt, but when his golden eyes fastened on hers, she pressed her lips shut. White sorcery flared beneath her eyes, but Kagome kept her eyes on his profile and jaw, hovering inches from her face. Warmth spread and retreated, and the faint tingling of pain was erased in the wake of a dull, steady ache.

Sesshoumaru did not move. His fingers still brushed against the skin on her shoulder, healed and perfect again.

"Are you being careless?"

Kagome's eyes darted to his face, the part of it she could see, just above her own.

"It wasn't his fault-"

"But are you being careless?"

His thumb passed over the healed injury, brushing across her collarbone.

"I was distracted," she managed to whisper, her entire existence suddenly diverted to his fingers.

"You were careless."

"Yes."

He sighed, long and low, his breath tickling her cheek and the tiny hairs across her brow. She was acutely aware of his presence, the lack of space between them, the intensity he radiated. All else was forgotten, and a strange apprehension settled over her, making it difficult to breathe, to think. She was frozen inside her own head, scrabbling and grasping for an anchor to throw in and pull herself out of the uncharted sea she was swimming in.

But before her stunted and collapsing intelligence could save her, the man murmured, "You have a scar."

"What?"

"There is a scar," the pressure of his fingers increased fractionally, "here."

"Oh," she breathed faintly, mind whirling as she tried to recall how that could have possibly happened. "It must be from the monastery, when we fell through the shoji screen. I think I was impaled by a rather large splinter."

"Mm," he murmured, his fingers caressing the place her skin had been marred. "Careless."

Kagome was about to protest when those long fingers traced a smooth trail from her scar across her collarbone. She shivered, and he pulled back enough for their eyes to meet.

She had forgotten how small she was in comparison to the great Warlord of the West. Somehow all her adventures and brushes with death made her feel much taller than she was, but standing there she only rose as high as his shoulder, diminutive and infinitesimal.

A burning trail worked its way across her chest, to sweep up the hollow of her throat. She felt the callous of his thumb graze along the sensitive skin under her chin; his strong fingers curl around the back of her neck, winding their way into her hair.

They stared at one another, caught in a web of time and fate, and they were a moment suspended, a beautiful thing in between the world and its ugly destiny, between sword and blood, between ancient times and the grey and changing future.

His painfully handsome face was schooled and blank and the eyes she had learned to read were strangely hooded and dark, inscrutable to her curious, wondering, and panicked gaze. The perfect curved lines on his cheek seemed harsh at such close proximity. The sun trickled down from between the rustling leaves, shafts of golden sunrays illuminating patches of light on his face and through his hair, colored silver and luminescent in the bright day.

She felt him hesitate, and although he was carefully reticent, she thought she saw his thoughts, running circles around his head. His right hand moved with interminable care and agonizing sluggishness, rose to find its place against her neck, a thumb pressed against her jaw. His hands tilted her face upward, and her breath caught painfully in her chest.

"You are very careless," he repeated in that same deep, muted tone.

Kagome swallowed hard, ventured around for something, anything to say, the words spilling out before she had thought them through, before they had even registered, "I suppose it's good you are here then, to watch out for a careless Protector."

The mask drawn over his face softened, and his lips lifted in a slight smile.

"Yes."

His golden eyes searched her face, and she felt the slow tug of his hands, pulling her forward. Heart in her throat, limbs unresponsive, she followed the pull of his fingers, those beckoning, quiet eyes. His fingers were gentle against her skin. And as he pulled her toward him he did so with such care, she thought he must have feared breaking her. He loomed above her like a dream, growing steadily closer, moving them toward the divide, narrowing by the seconds.

He was so close.

So much closer than he had ever been before, and there was nothing she wanted more than for him to pull her in and keep her there, in that moment that lay ahead of her. Pull her in and never let her go. Because all the things between them had never been so clear and so horribly muddy as they were right in this instant. And her heart twisted painfully in her chest as epiphany teetered on the brink, and he was just before her, his face so close, his breath upon her skin, his smile disappearing as he pulled her ever closer, ever nearer-

And at that moment, that horribly inopportune moment, the wind sighed, and the vague echo of soulless voices returned. Both Kagome and Sesshoumaru started, and the warrior dropped a hand away from her face to grip the sword at his waist, his eyes immediately swiveling west.

Kagome let out a breath of air, near gasping.

She was also having a difficult time standing on her legs. Luckily, one of Sesshoumaru's hands remained, though the touch had turned from tender to protecting, his mind elsewhere and far gone, centered on the strange tinge in the wind.

"And am I to guess that this was the reason you were careless?" He asked her dryly, eyes narrowing on the distant forest.

Her head spun and the gears in her mind rattled uselessly. How did he do that? Flip so easily from that heady moment to this one?

Heat rose to her cheeks and flushed warm over her body. His fingers flexed against her jaw.

"Ah…yes."

A gust of wind blew again, circled around them, pollen and bits of leaves and grass rising to dance along the breeze, and with it came the strange power, the flickering presence in the element. Sesshoumaru's eyes darted around, and it seemed to Kagome that he had a more difficult time pinpointing its origin than she.

She pointed westward, through the trees, "That way."

Sesshoumaru grabbed her hand, and in one quick movement, hauled her onto his back. Kagome gripped his shoulders, startled and fumbling, still weak kneed and confused, and before she had a chance to right her body or her mind, he was taking off through the trees and over the land.

"Due west?" He called to her over his shoulder.

She nodded emphatically, her fingers gripping the material of his shirt, bunching it into her sweating fists. "Due west," she confirmed, leaning down to speak into his ear.

Around them, the rush of air intensified and whipped past. Memory struck and Kagome gave a startled cry and fumbled within her torn shirt, extracting the Bell and Vajra to hold it in her hand.

Sesshoumaru slowed uncertainly, and gracefully glided down the loose dirt and leaves of a hillside.

"Keep going," Kagome urged as the magical trinket in her hands began to glow and warm, the Bell tinkering softly under her fingertips.

He broke back into a run, dodged a fallen tree, and slipped under another. Kagome held the gift from the Mage before her eyes. She cradled the small objects and watched, fascinated as the Bell rang again and the Vajra began to glow.

Sesshoumaru landed hard and Kagome slipped in his grasp, falling against his hard shoulders. He hoisted her further up his back and gripped her legs more surely; his elegant leaps and nimble movements gaining speed.

"Further?"

"Just a bit more," she murmured into his ear, unexpected excitement flaring within her.

He carried them through shadowy glens and forgotten paths, through broken tree limbs and rolling hills, and then, without warning, they broke into a darkened glade, encircled with trees. Sesshoumaru slowed to a stop in the middle of the strange place, tipping his head back to look into the overhanging foliage.

Cautiously, he lowered Kagome to the ground, and as he did, she felt his power rise, encircling them in protective sorcery. Here, the wind whispered sweetly through the trees, singing a simple song of the season, and it was like laughter, lilting, carefree. Kagome was given the distinct impression that it was a mischievous element, steady and even, but quick and unpredictable.

In her fingers, the Bell and Vajra hummed, and the tiny chime of the bell sounded out once, twice. Over the wind, like ripples from a pond, anchoring power grew and rolled, purifying the breeze and its intent. Silence hovered over them, and like falling rain it dropped into the glade, nullifying all sounds of the forest, muting the even sounds of Sesshoumaru's breathing, the flickering rhythm of Kagome's heart.

The warlord stilled and Kagome held her breath, her eyes trailing up to the tops of the trees, moving in a soundless wind.

"Say something," Sesshoumaru ordered, his back to her, his hand still poised on the hilt of one sword. His voice echoed strangely, bent and turned as it melded into the reverberations of the Bell.

"Hello?" Kagome ventured awkwardly, staring around the glade.

The noiseless wind sighed again, and near her shoulder, she felt the warmth of the summer air. Sesshoumaru turned sharply, and his hand found her shoulder, his sword drawing hard and fast, the sound of harsh metal against metal echoing loudly in their ears.

"It's ok," Kagome murmured, her shoulder stiffening as she felt the presence shift and change, move around to her other side. The breeze wound around her ankles and toyed with her hair. "Sesshoumaru, it's alright. It's ok. I'm fine. It won't hurt me."

Slowly, the man withdrew his hand and backed away. As soon as he removed himself from her presence, the air sharpened and snapped. The fluid calm broke, and from the forest floor, a clear whirlwind rose, Kagome at its center.

Her dark hair lifted up off her face, and the hands of the wind plucked ineffectively at her clothes, pushing her forward, beckoning her to follow. The gale twisted sharply, and Kagome felt her arms lift, her fingers spread wide as the wind licked over her skin. Around her neck the Bell rang and the Vajra warmed until it burned.

It was testing her, measuring purpose and merit, value and bravery.

_You are the Protector?_ It seemed to ask, a note of incredulity rising up, reaching to the heights of the sky. _You are the Shikon Jewel?_

"So they say."

_So they say. So _they_ say. But what do you say?_

An odd quiet settled in her head, washed free and windswept.

"I say they are right until proven wrong."

The voice laughed, a jovial sound, hidden deep in the whispers through the trees, the force surrounding her.

The wind turned scrutinizing, as if it were sizing her up, measuring her quality.

_You are very small- _

"That can't be helped."

_But you are very strong._

"If you say."

The whipping force died down, lulled back to a gentle breeze.

_You will do. Come this way. _

Kagome looked over her shoulder to see Inuyasha land next to Sesshoumaru, out of breath from his run. He watched her with wild eyes, incredulous and disbelieving, nodding firmly as Sesshoumaru spoke low, measured words into his ear. In an instant he was gone again, parting the grass and trees, taking off through the underbrush to disappear from sight and sound.

A hush descended, and gently, like a fingertip crooking for her to follow, the wind wrapped around her arms and legs and pushed her across the glade, toward the west, and what lay at the end.

* * *

Aeron had taken to sleeping during the days. Night brought too many dark corners and crevices for worries to hide and bide their time. It was easier to find solace in the sunlight. So he slept then, and let the rays of light chase most of his nightmares away. 

Lying on his overly large and ridiculously comfortable bed, his arms folded up behind his head, his eyes staring at the patterns of sunlight across his ceiling, the man couldn't help but wonder when he'd accept that Suzu was gone, and that, despite Kagome's reassurances and his own desperate hope, she might possibly never return.

A sudden headache lanced across his heavy eyes and with little effort, they slid closed. Darkness settled around him and soon, despite his heavy heart and persistent worries, he was winding a lazy trail into sleep.

The dream began nearly the moment he closed his eyes.

In the far distance, light flickered. With each passing moment that he drifted further into rest, it came closer, stretched and extended until he was staring at a blurred white horizon, split and uneven. Slowly, painstakingly, the scene sharpened into real images. But still, even with the crystallized view, it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at.

The sky was blue and clear, but on the horizon the sun had begun to sink, dragging the darker shades of the day behind it. Snowcapped mountains and peaks stretched up towards the abyss, glistened with muted rainbows and the pink haze of the ending day. Blue shadows crawled out to meet the coming night, and within them the air was freezing and still.

He was looking out at the landscape through a wrecked wall, blown and tore away from its foundation. His dark eyes roved upwards, and he nearly gasped to see each successive floor above him, missing beams and floors, walls and windows. Turning slightly, he caught sight of another ripped and shredded wall, and outside, on this side, night had begun to descend.

The eastern side was worse, torn and unrecognizable. The place he stood had been nearly leveled, but it was easy to tell that upwards and below, massive parts of the entire edifice were missing, had been wrecked so thoroughly that there was no longer a whole, but a fragment of walls, a skeleton of what had been.

He had been here before, once or twice in his dreams. But it had been well and whole, alive with magic and power. Now there was nothing but the cold wind and the silence of nothing and nowhere.

There was a shift at his side and a shadow.

He looked down and jumped so badly he nearly sent himself tottering over the rickety edge of a missing floor.

Suzu stood, wrapped in a worn blanket, her eyes narrowed against the setting sun.

And, oh, she was so beautiful, dark and steady, small and strong, the sunlight shinning on her, painting like a goddess from stories and legends untold. She sighed, a weary sound, and he could see her breath on the freezing air.

She couldn't see him, didn't know he was there.

He knew because he reached for her, and no matter how hard he strained, how hard he tried to touch her shoulder, to speak her name, she remained just out of reach, her name stuck in his mouth.

On his left side, someone stepped up to the nonexistent wall. Aeron, though he hated to do it, removed his eyes from Suzu and turned toward a man, nearly as tall as he, all dark hair and wise eyes. He was wrapped in simple clothes, a shield strapped to his back, a weary, careworn look about his face and gaze. There was something about this man, standing gently at Aeron's side that made him wonder… The unknown man was familiar to him, almost too much so.

Frowning, Aeron turned to give him his full attention, studying the contours of his face, trying, desperately to place the calm presence the man exuded. But his scrutinizing glance was interrupted when, on his other side, Suzu drew in a long breath and spoke out into the cold of the setting sun.

"Have all the inhabitants fled?"

"Nearly," the man replied softly. "They feared for their lives and their magic. Not all were as noble as your father. Few stayed to fight for his side and after…"

"They left."

"Yes."

Their voices fell into the dead air and where swallowed by the elements.

"Your father liked to think the best of them, but even he knew why so many had gathered here. It was not to promote peace and prosperity. There were spies among the ranks, those that would claim the power of others, if only they could. Many came to see him, to find out if he was the Miroku. I think they were sorely disappointed when he was so far from what they expected."

Suzu laughed sharply, a caustic sound that Aeron had never heard before.

"They expected him to be great and pretentious, a man who craved power."

"I believe so. Never mind those qualities would never be attributed to a monk or the Buddha. They are selfish men who strive for power. It is difficult to look for the good in people when one is so caught up in a lust for power."

Suzu glanced up and through Aeron, toward the man on the other side.

"And where did these holy men and sorcerers go?"

The dark haired companion met her eyes, and Aeron saw the hesitation and deliberation within his face.

The stout woman stiffened and a dark, angry emotion flitted across her face, drudging up shadows and ancient memories.

When she spoke her voice was low and uneven, filled with fury and cold, hard malice.

"The Hunters."

The man's head dropped forward in tired resignation.

"Some went to seek them, yes."

"Is power all that we search for? Is it all that matters?"

"To them it is, Suzu. But not to all."

At this point, Aeron was becoming increasingly agitated. If he thought wildly waving in his arms would gain her attention, he would have done it. If he thought resting his hand on her shoulder would have wiped away the fury and deep, gut wrenching hurt that tore at her face, he would have gladly given up ten years of his life to touch her. But his feet and hands remained stiff and still, and no matter how hard he fought to move, he was unable. Her name still tangled in his throat, his tongue loath to utter it.

More irritating still was the nameless man at her side who, it seemed, in the few moments Aeron hovered like a soulless ghost watching their interaction, had displayed uncanny knowledge about the Mage than Aeron was comfortable with.

He was not jealous, he told himself, merely worried for her safety and health.

Well, he was a little envious. But only because this man and his shield were with Suzu, and Aeron was miles and days away, fretting, uselessly over her safety and health. And now, also, exactly who this man was.

Who knew if this was reality? If she was safe and the dark stranger at her side was trustworthy and true? Aeron certainly didn't know, and the result was an increasing anxiety that nearly pitched him into frenzy.

Suzu and her counterpart stood silent and still, watching the sunset, a sense of sorrow building under the shadows. When the sun was nothing but a glow, a thin line along the mountains, the mage turned from the broken wall, and slid back into the shadows. And as she turned, Aeron caught sight of her tears, sharpened and illuminated by the moonlight and the dying remnants of the man she had loved above all else, a father who had died.

He reached for her, desperate to let her know. Let her know she was not alone.

I'm here. I'm here. Don't be sad.

His arm stretched, rose from his side, strained against the heavy lead weight, pulled, ripped, tore- god damn it he was going to let her know- His arm trembled under the strain, but his fingers stretched, his arm moved-

The tips of his fingers touched at her shoulder, glanced across the fabric of the blanket warming her body. She paused, and in the silence, he could almost hear her heart tumble over and start again.

With great restraint, she turned to look over her shoulder.

And her dark eyes looked into his.

For a moment, he thought he was imagining it, but there, on a tearstained face, he saw the slow smile dawn on soft lips and in gentle eyes. The twinkle returned to her dark gaze. The emotion drawn therein was so raw and sharp that his heart squeezed in his chest. And he missed her so much in that instant, just out of his reach that he thought he would fade away for the pain of it all.

"What is it?" The other man asked, glancing out into the darkening sky where her gaze seemed to lie.

A tear slid from her eyes as her smile widened.

She could not speak.

But she did smile, and her tears lost their sadness, spilled down her flushed cheeks.

And Aeron stretched, pulled through his dream and all that anchored him to the bed in which he lay, thousands of miles away, and touched his hand against her cheek. She leaned into the phantom caress and her eyes slid closed.

And then Aeron felt himself begin to fade away as something strong and distant pulled him from her side.

"Suzu!"

A hand fisted in his shirt, roughly jerked him out of his dream.

"Wake up, damn it!"

His eyes flew open and he saw Inuyasha hovering above him, shaking him out of reverie. A snarl curled along the other man's lips.

"Wake up!"

Startled, immediate fear replaced lethargy.

"What? What is it?"

Inuyasha hauled him up and out of the bed. "We have to go, now."

"Shit. What's wrong?" He stumbled and slapped Inuyasha's hands away to reach down and blunder for his shoes.

The man ran out of the room, his voice echoing down the hall. "It's the wind. And the Jewel. Hurry up! We don't have time to waste!"

Aeron reached around, snagged his pack and staff, and dashed after the man, who at that exact moment, was calling out to a corgi, watching them with serene interest.

"Stay here, Ajax! Be a good boy. We'll be back."

Aeron sprinted past the dog, raised a hand in a salute, still burning from the dreamy touch of his wayward mage, and followed Inuyasha out into the sunshine.

* * *

The wind had pulled her along, only relenting when Sesshoumaru kept a fair amount of distance. The element was like a small child. It seemed to run ahead and beckon her with careless laughter and cajoling words. It also seemed that the power within the wind was taking a liking to her. At least that was what Kagome assumed, as it seemed more than happy to keep her to itself. 

The sun had sunk beneath the treetops, and the warm heat of the day was giving way to the cooler air of night. The insistence of the breeze had died down and with it the Bell and Vajra, humming serenely at her chest.

Words had arced and faded, teased gently in her ear.

_Tomorrow_, it seemed to say, _tomorrow_.

And with that the presence had disappeared, leaving her nearly alone in the middle of the wilderness of Japan.

Kagome had slowed to a stop then, and watched as the last rays of sun disappeared behind dark leaves and bamboo stalks.

Behind her, Sesshoumaru drew close, and she felt his eyes burning into her back.

"We'll be there tomorrow," she whispered.

"Where?"

"Wherever we're meant to be."

* * *

In the dark Sesshoumaru was unfathomable. But he liked it that way. It was the best time to think, he had found. Through all his years and his musings and the times in which he took a moment to think, the waning hours between sunset and sunrise served best. 

The moon was hidden behind the forest, and only the faintest of light appeared in the small area they were camped in. Under the base of a large tree, the mage leaned and dozed. His staff was nestled in the crook of one arm and both hands were wrapped protectively around the knotted wood. Every few minutes the man gave a jerky start, as if shaking himself from a nightmare, only to fall back asleep and repeat the cycle.

A good distance away, Inuyasha sat, cross-legged and cantankerous. His sword leaned against one shoulder, ready for the enemies that had yet to appear. He too, was fighting sleep, his eyes heavy and foggy.

Sesshoumaru stood, unmoving, arms crossed, swords at his side, staring out into the dark, contemplating silently. And the object of his thoughts lay at his feet, curled up on the sleeping bag Inuyasha had thought to snag before they left Sesshoumaru's lands.

His eyes slowly gave up their stalwart search of the night and fell to the woman below. He watched her breathe, the steady rise and fall of her chest. In sleep her face lost all its worry and anxious lines. She looked younger, sleeping so deep and peacefully.

He had worried that she would dream again, as she had on all other nights. But as she folded her legs beneath her, and fell into slumber, the wind had risen in response, and blew gently through their small piece of forest. And it seemed to the warlord that he was not the only one protecting her as she slept.

Assured that she was sleeping well, his mind drifted to other things. Other things still surrounding and including Kagome.

At the moment, he was puzzling over what to do about her, because it was quite obvious that the things between them were unraveling surely and quickly, pulling them together with secure force.

He closed his eyes.

He had never been a weak being. He had always, _always_ been the master of his emotions, wants, desires, and needs. But he was distracted to the point of forgetfulness, when looking down at the green-eyed creature he so resolutely stood by.

Oh, what to do.

Sesshoumaru wondered at his passivity. By all rights he should have been furious with himself to be so caught up in her that he would make erroneous calculations and stupid, stupid, stupid mistakes. But that was the problem, was it not?

There was no calculation in it. It was unnecessary. There was little thought required when it came to Kagome. His hands moved of their own accord, his eyes of their own mind, his words of their own desire. He was beyond his own control and what little of his restraint was left was slipping fast, fading quick. That in itself should have panicked him and should have, really, let him know that this _was a very bad thing_. But it did not feel so wrong, when they traded glances and could not seem to find the words to speak to one another.

It seemed, rather, that was the way it was meant to be, quiet seconds where nothing else existed in time.

But he could so easily break her, and that was where the darkness returned to draw lines that he could not cross and remind him of those rules that he could not break. Because Sesshoumaru had to wonder what the future held. He had to wonder that if Fate were as real as others believed, that everything could not be as simple as he wished it were.

He could be like other men if he wished, but to do so would be detrimental and wrong. And Sesshoumaru had never been a mortal man, had no idea how to be.

It was a simple desire, he had realized, the moment he found her in the middle of the green plain, laid amongst the white flowers under the rising moon. It was such an effortless admission.

He wanted her.

He wanted her to live, yes.

He wanted her to be well and whole, certainly.

He wanted her to be Kagome, ever herself and painfully indignant and bright.

But all the sorcery and battles and history aside, Sesshoumaru wanted Kagome, the klutz from across the world, and it was such a simple thing.

A surprisingly unsurprising admission. But then, he was stubborn and sharp and removed, and it had probably been a long time coming, so he could not find it within himself to be too shocked. She had spelled disaster for him the moment he met her.

And she spelled ruin now, lying serene.

Because Sesshoumaru did not know what the future held and he knew he could ruin her easily, without trying, with as little effort as it took him to breathe.

He was a Warlord. A warrior without a kingdom, but a being- not a man- who had seen bloody war and history. He had remained steadfast and unaided, a solitary man. Above all that he was, the most important knowledge was that he was not made for her. And _she_ was not made for _him_.

No one was.

Because Sesshoumaru was not fashioned to want anyone. To desire any one soul. To divert so much of his being to watching over one, small, infinitesimal person.

Yet he wanted, yearned, and desired all the things he was not meant to have. Each and every pure characteristic, trait, and emotion lay within the girl from across the world. She had said it once, that those things, all the beautiful breakable things were part of him.

If only she understood how much.

Perhaps, though, he mused, she already knew. She was sharp and quick, and although he was quite sure they were both unsteady and still wary of the giant obstruction between them, propelling them together with magnetic force, he knew she was aware of it. He had seen that much in the way she looked up at him, beseechingly, as he held her head in his hands… and missed the moment where he might have found the future.

It had been for the best. As much as he wanted to dwell on where those next few seconds would have led him, that impossible future lay dark in his mind, a path that ended in ruin.

What, he asked himself, came after the end?

Would they live? Would they survive? Would she be well and whole? Would she be broken from the losses they had yet to sustain? Would Fate not take her from him?

To follow through with selfish desire would unwind what was to be.

Sesshoumaru laughed softly as his revelation simmered slowly, sinking into the deepest parts of his soul.

Fate had finally trapped him into belief.

And it had only taken a woman, with green eyes and hair as dark as midnight, to wrap herself around and within him, to change and alter him, to slice through his perspectives and show him, again and again, that she was worth more than he.

To show him that he could not alter Fate and Destiny.

Golden eyes darted to the two men leaning against their respective trees finally sleeping soundly. Assured that there were no eyes on him to judge and hold him accountable, he looked down at Kagome once more.

"You will not break," he said to her, and the way he spoke he knew it was more for him than for her. "You will not."

And Sesshoumaru was left back where he began, wanting the woman at his feet.

* * *

_Wake, Protector._

Kagome stirred under the warm weight over her shoulders and chest, frowning as sleep began to slip away.

_Wake_._We have not the time to waste._

Kagome was, in her sleepy state, inclined to request five more minutes. But when the warm lull of the morning wind turned sharp and insistent, almost cold and biting, and in her ear the breeze whispered words of loss and endings, what could happen and what might happen, urging her to wake, her eyes began to open, and her dread return. Fear knifed through her middle as a faint vision snuck into her head, painted her thoughts with visions of a demon and what he could do with power unimaginable.

She sprang upwards with a startled cry, her eyes flying wide.

The faint waking dream of darkness and despair dissipated, and in its wake a path was laid, one that imprinted into her mind, sank in so fully and deeply that she wondered if she would ever forget the way to where the future lay.

And then the wind was gone, rolling onwards to wait for her, to see if she was the one it wanted, the one to tame it.

Kagome looked up and west, her mind unraveling and spinning to collect all the thought in her head. And in the back of her mind, still fuzzy from sleep, still overtaxed and confused from visions and feelings and words on the wind, she felt the creeping crawl of foreboding. Like a whisper in her ear, she heard the promise of trouble and death and malice. Perhaps it was the wind, conveying the magnitude of her next task, perhaps it was luck that made her swivel backwards and look through the easily swaying forest, the slow dance of trees, or perhaps it was the current of Fate, that lingered on and over her, urging her onward and upward, to run and to fight.

To herself, she said, "We have to go."

And over her a shadow fell, a hand appearing in her line of sight. She caught the defined lines along his wrist, the sharpened claws of a being, so different than her own, and she looked up and met his gaze.

"Then we will."

And his hand closed over hers and she was pulled upwards and onto the back of the warrior. Behind her the other two ran, and before them the trees parted, and his feet followed her direction, and as they approached the western coast, Kagome felt her heart rise into her throat, lodged in place by the persistent fear, the unknown destiny that awaited her, wrapped in the wind.

* * *

Long, pale fingers dug into the dirt beneath, sodden with sweat and blood and magic. Sounds of agony tore from the being, writhing on the floor. The fires leapt at the sound, the spike in power drawn out from a demon, reduced to his knees. 

An old man cackled, and the sound cracked, split forth madness and insanity.

"Shall we test your powers now, demon? Shall we see what you will do, one day? Shall we show them what your power can be?"

There was a hiss from the dark, the small flare of power, the rising hand.

The blacksmith smiled, and extended his hand. Through his fingers dark sand slipped, to pool in front of the devil in the dark. From the fires the forger pulled the red hot metal and the twisted hand of the beast reached and grasped the searing, half formed object, and plunged it into the earth.

Against his skin, the heated metal hissed, and steam rose to curl with the dark, rolling power. And beneath the red orange glow, a perfect circle formed, smoothed, and reflected the light of the fires. Gasping, the demon wrenched his hand away, and slowly, the blacksmith bent and removed the wrought metal back to the fires.

Shaking fingers curled around the flawless circle, a piece of glass, and held it up before the light.

"Kagura." His voice sounded like grains of sand and breaking land.

From the light outside the cave, the demoness appeared, carrying apprehension like a cloak, drawing it within the stifled cave. Her fear rippled outward and mingled with the waves of the sea, the dance of the fire.

The pale face lifted, and in the shifting light her revealed himself, waxen and hallow, gaunt and waning. The demoness took careful steps toward him and reached trembling fingertips, her feet careful to avoid the dark stained sand and dirt beneath.

"Take it," he rasped, "and it will prove your loyalty."

Her shaking fingers stilled, and had the demon looked up into the light, he would have seen the determined furious rage behind her eyes, would have known that there would be no redemption from her, the wicked thing from the wind.

"Go. Go to our enemies and prove you are mine."

In her hands the mirror winked, shone, and from within, growing steadily more defined, a shape emerged. Like it was swimming toward the surface of lake, the shadow reached, and phantom fingers emerged, bust into the world to drag a small mass behind it. The cave flickered, and settled, and in the aftermath of the surge from the mirror the shadows shifted.

And the soulless eyes of a tiny creature looked up into the face of the demoness. And Kagura fought the urge to hurl the mirror into the sea, to escape from the empty nothingness she saw there in the being, the small void from the glass. Without a word or a thought, the white creature, diminutive and infinitesimal, walked out of the cave and into the day. And Kagura had no choice but to follow, to sweep them into her twisted wind and carry them to the western coast to meet the four and the fatethe dark path that lay ahead.


	42. Through the Mirror

Thanks very much for the reviews, really. Not only are they reassuring they inspire a need to write more and better. I appreciate it. The next review date could be late. Two weeks from today I start finals, so, be aware that the update may not come on that monday. Thanks again for the reviews, they made my week.

* * *

"Tuck your chin. 

You're going to get hurt, so expect it and be ready.

You may as well see it coming."- Achmed the Snake, _Rhapsody_

**Chapter 42**

**Through the Mirror**

The burning vision brought them in a winding trail westward. They curved through the land; their course altered enough to bypass all other living creatures, to avoid the rest of the earth. The coast of the western sea was still many miles away, but he could smell the salt on the air and the tinge of ancient magic mingling with the busy world outside their tiny sphere of existence. It seemed they had slipped through some crack and crevice in time, had been propelled back into a different era, devoid of the industrialized world and all its ways.

The wind remained quiet and still, but from the south Sesshoumaru could feel the build of rising power, curling up and over the stagnant air. It was still distant, but it tickled the edges of his senses and was an uneasy reminder of how exposed they were, wandering so carelessly into unknown territory. The darkness and thick paths brought them into places where time lay forgotten and untouched.

But as the shadows encroached, the foliage and underbrush thinned. Decrepit branches bare stretched like weakened arms to entangle in one another, and soon, the overhanging trees created a roof over their heads, blotting out the sky above. On all sides the dead forest crept in, creating a tunnel of earth and trees, steadily beckoning the companions along. Light was extinguished to the faint beams that managed to work their way down through the darkness. Behind them, the day faded into shade and the twisting trail of trees and scorched grass. Ahead of them, the depth stretched and yawned, curled outward and bled into black.

They followed the tunnel-like path with cautious steps, hands on weapons, eyes ahead and behind. From the south, Sesshoumaru could feel a strange rolling, flickering power, distracting him from the immediacy of the present. He paused and turned, his eyes glowing and catching what little light existed in the place of dead sorcery and forgotten time, narrowing on the southern way and the surge of nothing, dancing at the edge of his mind.

A gentle hand touched the fingers resting on his sword, and he looked down into Kagome's face. She walked past him, her hand still connected to his wrist, pulling him after her, asking with silent, unspoken words that he follow. Sesshoumaru hovered on the edge of indecision, and fell over the precipice. He allowed the tug of her hand to pull him away from the disconcerting presence, the void growing in his mind.

Sounds echoed strangely in the dark, and more than once, the warlord turned and searched in vain for eyes within the haunting woods. In the distance, he could hear the faint cracking of stone and dirt, as if the ghosts of footfalls disturbed the land.

Just as the trees had melded together to form their tunnel, they melted away, thinning out until the darkness was comprised of limb and memory, an absence of sun. Above them the day faded still and covered bare branches with a thin veil of mist and strange, hanging fog.

The strange echoes amplified, bouncing around off tree limb and trunk. The air had gone still and rigid and within in it he could taste the history and recollections of things long since dead. The stagnant air was almost too much for his overdeveloped olfactory senses. He could only taste the stale air and unmoved earth.

He could only hear the crack of the earth beneath his feet and the shift of the rock in the distance. He felt as if the earth was swaying just slightly, but it was only the trees, moving in a nonexistent breeze. Sesshoumaru paused and the others filed past him. Each cast a wary glance back over their shoulders, cagey eyes immediately darting forward again.

The magic of the place was sordid. It had seeped into the earth and the trees, up into the roots and through the tips of the limbs arching overhead. The sparse blades of grass vibrated within its strange power, hushed and silent as it was. He knew the wind was near, could almost feel it on his skin. It hovered in the static air, hiding.

Sesshoumaru stepped forward again and as they walked. The tree tunnel thinned again and around them the landscape rolled and opened. The trees were still thick and tall, but there was room to move between them. The four stepped out into the broken pathway, into dim light at the edge of the dead forest they had traversed.

The ground curved up from their feet, rolled up an incline. The trees bent away from the rise of the land, crooked and leaning. Sesshoumaru shouldered past Aeron and Inuyasha, fell by Kagome's side and stared at the arms of the earth, reaching up toward the clouded and misty sky.

Within the darkened branches of the twisting trees, long lengths of fabric hung. Like ribbons tied on mournful presents, they twirled morosely against the dark. It might have been a beautiful sight had the wind blown, had the trees possessed their leaves. Without the life and vitality of the land, the stillness of the ribbons and trees seemed to call a warning to the hesitant companions.

Sesshoumaru peered closely at bare branches and the ribbons threaded between. Hanging on each limb of each tree, tied amongst and next to the swathes of fabric were tiny silver bells, of varying shapes and sizes, glinting with what little light the day possessed. They made no noise without the aid of the wind, merely swung in a gentle dance. Through the smaller trees, and their strange ornaments he caught the barest glimpse of a mammoth shape, taller and darker than the others. It was the greatest of all the trees, seated at the top of the rolling hill, a shadow, a shape amongst the dark and sorcery of the place.

Next to him, Kagome shifted, her hand falling to her chest and the necklace that lay beneath her shirt. Sesshoumaru could feel the faint vibrations of the Bell and Vajra, humming against her skin. Her face was pale and waxen and he could see the anxiety glimmering in her bright eyes.

"What is it?" He asked, his voice rumbling outward, disturbing the age-old silence of the place.

She stared past him and toward the giant tree, illuminated and shadowed on the hill.

"They come from the south."

Her eyes found his, and the truth was written real and clear, defined and delineated until he thought he saw two indistinct shapes within her black irises, flying across the plains, headed north to the place that wept of long lost wind and legend. She blinked, and the movement within her eyes was lost, her focus back in place, her set determination rising like fire.

"We don't have a lot of time. They're close. Almost to the edge of this place."

Sesshoumaru drew his sword and looked south once more. It was a futile action, though, he could no more sense their enemies than he could a moment before. The threat flickered like a flame, in and out, bouncing around like the sounds in his ears.

"What do you need to do?" He inquired in his dark, soft voice, keeping his keen gaze to the tree line.

"I need you to watch my back," she replied.

To his left, in the corner of his eye, Sesshoumaru saw Aeron start violently, and heard Inuyasha scoff angrily. The warlord looked down into Kagome's face and nodded once, and then she was gone, running up the hill, her hair streaming behind her, her emerald eyes flashing with the strange, ethereal light filtering through shadow and magical fog.

He ground his feet into the earth, clenched his teeth against the sudden headache and sharp pain that lanced through his head. The sword in his hand demanded that he follow her. His own conscious demanded that he be by her side. He had learned from experience, that to let her go alone was to let her be careless, to allow for vulnerability.

But she was not helpless and he could give her what she asked, he could trust that she would do this, and return to him safe.

He watched her thread her way through the steep incline and around the thick trunks of trees. Watched her slip like a shadow until she was nothing but the dark, moving in and out with practiced ease. He clenched his fist and turned to the tree line at his back, throwing a careless command to the men at his side.

"Protect her at all costs."

Aeron's resolve billowed out from the stave he had been named the master of, washing over the ground to form a shield, a barrier behind them. Inuyasha's determination was in his feet, carrying him back through the thick trees to wait and spring, his sword in his hands, his rosary already unwinding from around his neck.

Sesshoumaru raised his hand before his face and watched his sorcery wind down in white and gold tendrils. Like it had so many times before. The day he first saved her, the morning she fell from the heights, the second before a twisted demon ended her between a serpent's jaws, the moment he had traced his fingers over her injuries and healed away the pain. And for all the good deeds he had managed to accidentally accomplish, all the reluctant heroic, selfless acts, he was still a murderer, a man with blood on his hands.

And through the darkness his smile gleamed, and he slipped away to await the fight that would come, his blood clamoring for victory.

* * *

Kagome ran up the dead hillside, her eyes rooted on the silhouette of the tree. Her steps followed the lingering voice echoing through the wilderness. The wind had died down hours ago, but its faint soul hovered just before her, beckoning her to continue on. She could feel the element near, hiding in deep pockets of dark and shadow, hidden beneath the rocks and clinging to the trees. It threaded into her legs and pushed her up the dirt slipping beneath her feet.

Behind her she could feel the strange rising sorcery, the one that flashed in and out of existence, a void, an empty pit. The yawn and gap widened, and in her mind's eye she saw nothing, and she knew that whatever came from the south did not bode well for her.

The land's rise inclined harshly, and the dead earthen rock beneath her feet was a precarious foothold threatening to give way. She hauled herself up the rocky embankment, sought safe places to wrap her fingers around, twisted her hands into the hanging ribbons from the trees and hauled herself upward, closer and closer to the place she was to be.

The silence was near deafening. The ethereal mist and dark blocked out the day and encompassed her within its arms. With each harsh breath from her mouth the world around her echoed, thundered with the slight sound. The farther she climbed, the harder it was to sense her companions though she knew they lay at her back, at the bottom of the rise. She could feel a faint tingle of Sesshoumaru's magic snaking along her spine, and for that small comfort she was eternally grateful.

The sword on her back, which Inuyasha had so smartly grabbed and hauled over the land for her, weighed heavy and cumbersome. She could not afford to take it off, but was becoming increasingly worried that it would slow her down.

The great tree hovered up and over her, towering in a majestic burst of dark radiance. It was a twisted thing, so ugly that she marveled at what it could have been, perhaps once young and alive.

But her wonder was deep and muted, overthrown by increasing worry and heart pounding fear. Just a few more feet and she'd be at the base of the tree. Just a few more…

A shout went up from behind her and she faltered. She turned sharply, falling against the black trunk of an ancient tree. It sounded like Inuyasha, but it was hard to tell at the distance. The call bounced around, echoing off the trees to be dulled by the foggy mist. The earth beneath her feet rumbled, shook, and then quieted, and in the few moments of an aftermath she felt sorcery erupt and explode, rocketing outward with a burst of power so forceful it stole her breath away.

The air screamed, and that same dark hole in her awareness opened and exploded into crystalline precision. The entity from the south was sweeping through the trees, unleashing its magic and power over the men who had sworn to protect Kagome, alone on a darkened hill.

Even through the dark haze she could see the white purging power of Sesshoumaru's magic, the deep blue that was Aeron's. She could feel the snap and whine of Inuyasha's sorcery as he strained against the binding rosary around his neck.

Another explosion, more forceful than the first rocked the earth, and beneath her, she felt the loose gravel and sparse grass begin to slide. The reverberations of the eruption thundered across the land, rolling over the buckling earthen floor. Streaks of light glanced off something in the distance, sending broken rainbows through the dark air. The churning ground ripped asunder as a sword plunged into rock and soil. The darkness deepened as midnight fluttered out from the golden rings of a dead mage. Five arcs of red light passed through the trees, uprooting them and tossing them high.

"Shit," Kagome uttered weakly, backing against the tree trunk.

When the fourth explosion thundered out and the ground rocked once more, she turned on unstable legs to trip her way around the final obstacles to the tree. Her hands shook as she hauled herself up over a slab of rock and around a thin copse of brittle trees. With sheer determination she pulled herself up and over the massive roots of the tree, fighting the pull of gravity as it threatened to send her cascading back down the steep incline.

The strips of fabric hanging from this tree were greater in size and strength, and Kagome wound her hands around them, leveraging herself as she wound her way around the massive breadth of the tree trunk. Around one more root, over a sharp boulder that jutted high like a cliff face, and she was at the top of the hill, the other side of the tree's trunk.

Stumbling forward, scrambling up the last few feet of the incline, she found herself tottering on the lip of a rock basin. Beneath her feet lay a twenty-foot drop to the flat floor of the valley, devoid of life and vegetation. Below her feet there were no trees, dead or alive. There was nothing but rock and dirt, untouched for centuries. The same strange, dark mist hung over this place, rolled up and out from within the depression.

Swinging back she faced the tree again, her eyes darted over the huge tree and down to its base, where, nestled between the great roots that stood higher than her head, a tiny, dilapidated shrine had been built, abandoned and forgotten now.

And when her eyes fell on it, Kagome heard the voice of the wind, reverberating from within the little wooden hut, calling her forward. She laughed with sudden relief and abundant hope. Stumbling down to the place she wound her fingers around the rotten doors, and stealing her courage, sending a silent prayer to nothing and no one, she rent them wide, the doors shattering into a fine, dusty mist under her assault.

And there it was.

_There_, embedded into the tree, hidden from sight.

Once revered and never forgotten.

There in the darkened bark of the great, dead tree, through thick layers of wood, a small glow radiated outward. The pearly sheen was warm on her skin, sparkling in her eyes. It couldn't have been much larger than a quarter, that piece of the infamous jewel, grown into the base of the tree.

So small it could fit in the palm of her hand.

All this, she thought, her conscious thought receding under the momentous discovery before her, all this for a tiny jewel.

The wind hummed in her ear, buzzed within the tree.

As if in a trance, Kagome reached to her back and withdrew her sword from its scabbard, and brought the tip to rest against the tiny glow. She stared down at the rough bark; so dark it was almost black, pulled back her arms, preparing to thrust the sword tip into the tree, to gouge out the jewel and keep it, hold it close, run with it to the farthest ends of the earth.

She sucked in a breath, reared back, ignored the triumphant surge of the wind around her face, and swung forward… as a voice cut through the air like the sword she wielded-

"And now we find ourselves the jewel."

Her heart leapt to her throat, and the world fell into odd disquiet.

In a move that would have made Inuyasha proud, Kagome pivoted and leveled her sword at the enemy who had so stealthily crept upon her.

She stood on the rim of the basin, fluttering a pretty jade fan before her face. Even with the thin the paper ornament covering her face, Kagome could see her smile echoing in her dark, crimson laced eyes.

Kagome shuffled her feet, sidling sideways to regain her unbalanced footing.

Kagura laughed and snapped the fan shut. "Still playing warrior I see. Too bad you couldn't have learned more from your men. Although they aren't doing too well themselves now are they? I made it past them after all."

Kagome's eyes narrowed on the woman's hands, the fingers that gripped the black base of the fan. She didn't have much time or much room in which to maneuver. Two things that she needed to survive.

With little thought, Kagome darted to the side and threw herself out of the alcove of roots, rolling over her shoulder as she slipped away from the corner she had been backed into. She struggled up onto her feet, fighting the lay of the land that threatened to pull her backward and to a headlong fall. Kagura had stepped back, still near the edge of the basin, watching Kagome with suspicion and slow fading humor.

The jewel glowed brightly from within the tree, tempting both women with its beckoning call.

But to turn their backs was to ask for death, and although the very fate of the world rested on that stupid, tiny fragment just feet from her reach, Kagome was quite sure she could do no one any good if she was dead. Plus, Sesshoumaru would probably find a way to resurrect her soul and kill her again, just because her death would cause him so much damned trouble.

Definitely not worth the risk.

And while the last thing she wanted to do was die at the hands of the demoness, she couldn't quite stomach the thought of losing the jewel piece now that it was within her grasp.

The wind was whispering over her skin an insistent and worried query.

With her sword still pointed toward the dark creature, she flicked a glance at the tree trunk and the pinkish glow that seemed only to intensify the longer they stood amidst inaction. In the distance, Kagome thought she heard the roar of nothing and everything, washing over the trees and the dark.

"You've come all this way, Demoness, why not take it for yourself, for your master? Take it. I can't stop you." She jerked her chin toward the object, "Take it to him. He'll be so pleased you've wrested it away from my incapable hands."

Kagura paled, and her dark eyes flicked to the gem. Something like fear washed over the woman's face and then she turned back toward Kagome, shaking, breathless Kagome, holding her sword aloft to face down her enemy.

"Still a silly little girl playing sword."

"I might play hard."

The wind demoness smiled viciously as explosions rocked the ground again, nearly knocking Kagome off her feet.

"Then let's play."

She opened her fan and drew her sword. She extended one arm, whipping out the fan and a gust of impossibly strong wind, her sword following the first attack, streaking toward Kagome's exposed throat.

The woman stumbled back, lowering her sword to block the attack snaking toward her. The dark, thin sword of the demoness glanced off her weapon, jarred her balance and the grip on her sword. The demonic wind whipped past and Kagome fought to remain on the steep incline, drawing farther back from the tree.

Kagura eased back, offered Kagome a single moment to breathe, and then she moved again, a black blur in the darker world. Kagome brought her sword up, braced her hand against the flat of the sword, spun it sideways, and blocked the deadly slice that whipped by her side, dropped the blade tip to protect her middle.

The demoness faltered again, eyes narrowing darkly.

And then it was Kagome's turn. She gripped her sword sure and straight, took a step, one two, three, feigned left darted right, brought her sword down and across Kagura's, gave her no time to adjust before whipping backward and drawing the blade across her shoulder, ripping through the dark kimono and leaving a thin bloody line in her wake.

The demoness staggered against the edge of the valley, eyes wide and confidence rocked. Kagome curled low, protecting her chest and face, eyes rooted on the superior warrior before her.

Behind Kagome, the glow from the jewel had intensified, was threading its way up the tree and through dead limbs. Backlit by rose she stood, sword held tight and proud, feet planted firm in the dead land.

Over her unsteady breathing she heard the sigh of the wind, still burrowed into the jewel and the tree, the roar of explosive sorcery, threading up and over the hill, racing toward the two women, locked in one another's gazes.

Kagura and Kagome stared at one another, and in a maddeningly brief moment, something strange seemed to pass between the two. Kagome saw the look in the other woman's eyes, an emotion that was laced with fear and determination and something so sad and somber that Kagome found herself slipping back and away from her fierce anger.

There was truth in her eyes, reflected in the bright dance of the jewel. Like it purged all the dark and sharp and bloody corners of her soul, blew away the deception and evil from which she had been born, in the flicker of a second, the time between before and after, Kagome saw redemption in darkness, and stayed her sword.

It was a stupid, idiotic thing to do, to believe in something that could not be put into words. It could have been a ploy. It probably was. But if there was anything Kagome had learned in her life, it was that her unconventional actions often ended with the best, though highly unexpected results. And though her inner warrior screamed for her not to do it, not to leave herself open to attack, Kagome lowered her blade just enough to ease out of her defensive stance.

"Why haven't you killed me yet?"

Behind them the sound of uprooting trees and unrestrained sorcery amplified and surrounded.

Kagura's gaze slid from Kagome to the tree and the jewel imprisoned within.

"You could kill me. Right now."

Kagura's gaze snapped back to Kagome's face.

"Why haven't you?"

The woman's eyes darkened as the power of three warriors surged, a void opened, a harsh cry screeched out into the dead woods. Something in the distance shattered like crystal, burst into a thousand pieces to wash over the sky.

"Because I will have my revenge yet."

The ground thundered and rocked, began to roll as the slope reverberated with a great amplifying shock. The loose soil slid downward, and Kagome stumbled. Her eyes flew to her feet and she gasped. The entire incline was moving under the force of the power still tumbling in the earth. The rock and soil was separating, sliding back down to the bottom of the hills, dragging the trees and roots with it.

Kagome turned to look down into the forest. In her mind, her vision tunneled, rocketed her back down the hill and into the fray of sorcery fighting for dominion at the bottom of the slope.

Through the shimmer of magic hanging heavy in the air, her vision parted on the indefinable shape surrounded by shattered glass.

A little girl with a mirror and death in her eyes.

The void, the emptiness, the nothing.

The mirror plucked at Kagome's soul, dragged her mind out from inside its sanctuary.

Kagome stepped back, stumbled toward the rapidly disappearing edge of the ravine, eyes still held within the soulless gaze of the beast before her, trapped inside her own mind. The pull of the ground beneath her feet intensified, and suddenly there was nothing but air beneath her, and she was falling over the edge of the basin, down into the dark and mist, pulled down and down by Kagura's magic.

And as time slowed down to its darkened crawl, Kagome watched the white demoness twirl the mirror and pull the entire hillside down on top of her companions, fighting to save her life.

* * *

The empty presence was flying up and over the trees, uprooting the dead matter and forest floor as it swept past.

The moment Sesshoumaru was sure Kagome was up the hill he moved, darted through the trees and toward the source of the power. It flickered in and out, but even as it escaped his senses, there was no denying the depravity that was laced within. The power was unmistakably linked to Onigumo.

No one else would seek them with such fervor. No one else could taint the air with such evil.

Sesshoumaru could taste the demon's malcontent, mingling with the heavy dirt and dust and dulling sorcery. It filtered out from the cavity of enchantment rising high from the south.

The warlord crouched low in the dark dirt, shrouded in the deep mist, waiting for his enemies to appear. The gloom curled up and around his stooped form. Like a curious touch from a child, a lingering question mark, the mist rolled gently over his shoulders and touched across his face. The black seeped within the mist seemed to curl around and nestle him within protective dark.

He raised an eyebrow at the tendrils of necromancy, lingering in front of his eyes.

The air around him was still eerily still, but he could feel the gentle lull and movement of the wind, slowly changing the currents of the stagnant air. He resisted the urge to smile, a dark, amused laugh tangling in his throat. It seemed Kagome had not exaggerated the personality within the wind, and for all its fickle nature, it had had decided it was warily interested in him, too.

In the distance the already silent day had gone a shade quieter. The adversaries drew close, hovered over the four, shrouded in dark and motionless time. Sesshoumaru's eyes traced along the seemingly endless line of trees and caught the subtle movement of his younger brother.

Inuyasha darted through the black forms, like a shadow himself. Sesshoumaru saw the dull glint of a sword, and then the younger Taisho was gone, snaking through the land. In the distance there was a ringing echo of snapping tree limbs, and Inuyasha's power surged.

The first loop of his rosary.

The earth rocked beneath him, and the unmistakable surge of sorcery billowed up and out, disturbing the stagnant mist that hung through the trees. The air seemed to take a breath; the trees leaned toward the south. Sesshoumaru reached out a large hand and splayed his fingers across the ground, balancing himself as the earth continued to rumble.

The minutes ticked by, and while power erupted, unfurled and exploded, Sesshoumaru waited, his eyes fixed on the dark distance.

Around him the dark mist had started a winding retreat back to the north, the direction Kagome had run. He could feel her, just tickling the edges of his mind, stumbling her way up the hillside.

Another explosion rocked the ground, and just feet away, the air started to move toward him, the trees shake under the force of something great. The weak bases of the trees cracked under the pressure, the pull of power. Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed, and through the darkness he saw a luminescent shape move.

He sprang.

The golden white power that left his outstretched hand sliced through the opposing trees, and through the shattered matter he leapt, his free hand drawing his unnamed sword, aiming straight and true.

And there it was-

His enemy.

She stood no taller than a child of five or six, frail and tiny. Long, snow-white hair hung limp around a pallid face, dark, deep set eyes that radiated pure empty nothingness. Soulless eyes that reflected his face, moving steadily closer to her, standing complacent and unafraid. In her small hands she held a mirror, a perfect circle. But there was no reflection in the surface, no image that stared back.

As the long moment stretched out, Sesshoumaru's long strides propelling him toward the girl and the nothing that lay in her eyes, her mirror, the power that pervaded the place she stood in, he felt himself begin to fall forward, ensnared by the void from which she was comprised.

His eyes widened as he felt the threads of the unseen snap rigid around his limbs, assist his movement toward the end that lay within her hands. As if he were caught in an ocean tide, a whirlpool, a tiny thing in the midst of undulating waves, Sesshoumaru fell.

This, he decided, his thoughts suddenly slipping into nothingness, was not going well.

A flicker of movement from the trees and then the world exploded in blue sorcery. In the chaos Sesshoumaru pulled, twisted, pivoted, reached- broke free of the spell that was threatening to swallow him whole, and sank low to the ground, ran along the dusty earth and threw himself into the relative safety of the tree line.

Leaning back against the brittle bark of a large tree, he listened to the shriek of power as Aeron, hidden amongst the bare branches, wielded the power he had mastered. The momentary magic was dispelled with minimal effort, and in a matter of seconds, the girl and her mirror were once again free and clear from attack.

A shadow dropped down beside Sesshoumaru, and the warrior looked down at the crouched form of his brother.

Inuyasha nodded to him and in the faint, inconsistent light, Sesshoumaru saw the pallor of the other man's complexion, the shaking of his hands and legs. It took most of Inuyasha's concentration to remain on his feet. As it was, he had one hand splayed across the base of the tree, supporting his weakened legs.

"She hit me with a full blast of the damned mirror thing," he snarled under his breath, casting a wary glance over his shoulder. "The thing nearly ripped my soul out through my mouth." His dark eyes traced upwards and met Sesshoumaru's bright ones. "I hope you weren't expecting me to be prepared for this. I know you said everything, but, _shit_, I-"

Before Inuyasha could finish his thought Sesshoumaru ducked down and grabbed his brother's shirt. With all his strength he shoved the man aside and over the twisted roots of the trees, urging him to move. Behind them, the tree they had leaned against snapped in half and was sucked out of the ground and toward the tiny creature, wielding the bottomless mirror.

"Go!"

Sesshoumaru pushed Inuyasha back through the trees, and together the two men weaved a trail back toward the hillside. The land under their feet began to sway. Gravity was suddenly unhinged, and the soil and rocks, dead roots and trees began to slide, sucked toward the powerful girl child, slowly following their retreating steps.

In front of Sesshoumaru, Inuyasha stumbled, his feet catching on the swiftly moving ground. The warlord reached as Inuyasha threatened to fall backwards into the pull of the unnatural gravity, sunk his claws into the front of his brother's shirt, and pulled him along in his wake.

They ran over the upturned roots and uneven ground, attempting, in vain, to place distance between them and their persistent enemy. Through the dipping and swaying trees, Sesshoumaru caught sight of Aeron, his dark blue robes, running a course parallel to theirs, the gold of his staff flashing out through the darkness.

The surge of the pull intensified as they reached the tree line that separated the rise of the hill from the flat land. Sesshoumaru dropped Inuyasha, and the other man fell back against a thatch of trees, his trembling hands moving to the second loop of his wooden necklace.

The great Warlord of the West turned, allowing the drag of the land to move him toward the source of power. She was moving through the trees, walking with the ease of a creature unafraid.

Against the tree, Inuyasha crouched, power gathering in his hands. His teeth clenched against the fight within his soul, and unbidden, a cry tore from within his throat. Red seeped into his dark eyes, bled out into his skin.

Aeron burst through the trees, pivoted on his feet. The sleeves of his robes billowed behind him like wings, fluttering in a magical wind. The dark thunder on his face reached into his eyes, tinged with azure, twinkling with the soul of a man lost to the world. With two hands wrapped around the stave, he brought the rod down, swung with all his power and fury, and unleashed blue fire and streaks of light.

Sesshoumaru raised his sword, infused with his sorcery and thrust it into the ground beneath. The blade cut through the moving earth, buried itself to the hilt. Underneath the wrought metal, the moving soil began to crack. Whisper thin lines threaded out from the place of impact. Like a residual impact, dirt and dust flew out of the cracks and slabs of earth began to heave a path to the girl passing through the trees.

Inuyasha was staggering upright, dragging a clawed hand across his chest to rip through the thin material of his shirt. Blood welled beneath the shallow wounds and dripped off his sharpened claws. He leapt, lashing out through the air, his magic fueled by his blood.

Over the buckling land blue smoke rose as red streaks of light upturned the trees and layers of earth.

And the three watched as their attack met, fused, and grew. It rushed over the air, an arrow of pure force aimed for the tiny being offset against the trees.

Onigumo's demoness turned her mirror in her hands and light refracted out toward the merging power. She held the mirror high and like the eye of a storm forced through he eye of a needle, the power they had unleashed withered into a tapering point, was sucked into the tiny mirror to disappear within its perfect surface.

The demoness staggered back and the glass shook in her hands. With a deft twist of her fingers she spun it counterclockwise, lowered it to her stomach, and unleashed her attack.

It burst forth in a maelstrom of light. An impossibly huge shape crawled out from within the depths of the weapon, flew out in an explosion of power. Momentarily blinded, Sesshoumaru wrenched his blade from the earth and shouldered Inuyasha to the ground. A lithe silhouette passed by him, so near he could have reached out and touched it had he not been preoccupied with saving his brother's life. Kagura snaked by him to run up the hill after Kagome, her feet and the twisted wind she mastered carrying her over the moving landscape.

He blinked against the fading brilliance and was faintly aware of a looming presence, standing high and tall over him. As the bright spots faded from his eyes, he raised his head and his gaze fell across the claws, crystal and clear, digging into the dark, ruptured earth. His eyes drifted farther upwards, over the huge hind limbs, the defined, powerful front arms. Further still, over the broad expanse of an unmoving chest. The graceful, deadly lines of a neck, arching and curved, glass spikes and cascades of beauty, sharpened and hewn into deadly scales. Transparent eyes fixed above a deadly mouth with its perfectly fashioned teeth, ready to rip and tear and kill.

A dragon hewn from crystal and mirrors.

A glass beast made of their own power.

The creature reared, its head thrown back in a grotesquely beautiful display of dominion. Sesshoumaru caught Inuyasha's arm in his hand and hauled the man up and over the fractured land. A soundless roar ripped through the air and the beast opened its mouth. Sesshoumaru sheathed his sword, caught Aeron with his right hand and threw up a barrier to the attack aimed at their backs.

Where flames might have appeared, glass flew instead. The repetitive sound of hollow impacts echoed behind. Sesshoumaru shoved the two men away and spun around to see the projectiles burying themselves within the protective wall of magic. Outside, the dragon loomed, head low, eyes level with Sesshoumaru's.

On either side of their protective barrier the dark trees closed in, offering them a momentary sanctuary from the beast. Inuyasha had collapsed to the ground, breathing erratically. Aeron knelt nearby, peering anxiously at Inuyasha.

"Am I going to have to slap you?"

"What?" Inuyasha barked breathlessly, irate.

"Get a hold of yourself, there's a dragon waiting to kill us."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I was only saving your ass back there."

Sesshoumaru heard Aeron scoff. "My ass? I wasn't the one who collapsed."

"Yeah? That's because I've been doing all the work. No, don't touch me; I'll get up by myself. I said don't_-!_"

"Shut up. We have to get rid of this thing. Kagome needs us."

Sesshoumaru glanced at the two men in time to see Inuyasha wrench his elbow out of Aeron's hands. The man swayed for a moment before he regained his balance. Though he remained pale and waxen, he stayed on his feet and his magic and power were still strong, not yet broken or tapped.

"If you are done…?" Sesshoumaru asked sharply.

Azure rose and rolled off of the mage. Inuyasha took a steadying breath and then unsheathed his sword.

"Ready," Aeron affirmed darkly, voice strong, humming with the power just below his skin.

"Ready," Inuyasha murmured faintly, with weaker force but the same conviction.

"Good."

With a flick of the hand the golden barrier dropped, and the glass shards that had embedded themselves within the sorcery sprang to life, hurtled toward the men. Aeron raised the staff, and the golden circlets glimmered. In the time it took Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha to take a single step forward the glass blades burst, showering them with a sparkling mist.

Sesshoumaru slid around the side of the creature, whipping his sword up to his face where his eye could gaze through the circle fashioned within the metal. At the dragon's back the demoness stood, controlling the creature with the sure manipulation of the mirror within her hands.

The adversary turned toward him, raised her mirror in defense. A dark smile crawled across the warrior's face.

"_Now_."

The third and final loop of the rosary. An O-fuda from within the pocket of a robe. The sorcery forced through the forged weapon, nearly under his control.

Aeron's eyes slid shut and the thin paper within his hands burst into flame. Inuyasha leapt through the trees, avoiding the snapping jaws of the creature from the mirror.

The mage stuffed the burning talisman within the rings hanging from his staff, pulled the stave back in one clean sweep, an arc of light following the graceful movement of his arms. His lowered face was dark with determination and fury. His shoulders hunched, his hands wept midnight and the gift from the wood goddess burned with red flames. Inuyasha dropped from the sky, his sword flashing black light. It left his hands the moment Aaron released the staff, launched it toward the dragon blocking their path.

The sword flew straight, the staff aimed high, and Sesshoumaru sank to his knees as his power was pulled out from his soul and threaded into the ancient incantations infused within his sword. The air burst with gold fire, orbs of light that dispelled the darkness and gloom. Through the haze he saw the glow of the staff embedded deep with in the beast, still burning bright.

There was a shuddering moment, a crack and a crease in time.

The demoness faltered, her magic wavered as she struggled to deflect such powerful sorcery. Power warred a battle beneath the steep hill, the incline that Kagome had disappeared so long ago. Through the haze Sesshoumaru saw the demoness stumble to the ground, reach a hand out, fingers flexed, eyes narrowed with concentration-

The mirror glinted, winked at the slope. The hillside shuddered; fell under the onslaught of power within the weaponry. The entire slope ruptured and began to slide, pulled inward into the tiny mirror.

And then the magic hanging in the air electrified, sharpened, was pulled tight and long, and before he had a chance to stop the spell he had cast- it snapped, exploded with a force so great he was thrown into the foliage, crashed and rolled, skidded into the dirt. His sword was knocked free from his hand, his magic abruptly ended.

Sesshoumaru lay between the roots of the upturned trees, listened to the earth disappear, and watched as the darkness returned and sank around him like a grave.

* * *

Kagome hit the ground and rolled. The air was knocked from her lungs and a painful spear of agony ricocheted through her body. Dust and dirt and debris continued to fall over the lip of the canyon, showering her with rocks and tree roots.

Blinking rapidly to clear the soil from her eyes she looked upward, her already laboring breath catching in her aching chest.

The vision in her mind still kept her prisoner even through the dull ache lighting along her prone body. The little girl stood amidst the onslaught of three great warriors, watching them with dark, impenetrable eyes. In her hands she still held that mirror, glittering with strange light. Behind her, in the moving trees, something large was thrashing, snarling against the explosions of azure magic originating down amongst the three.

Kagome breathed a silent sigh of relief. At least one companion was still able to fight, and judging from the cerulean hue of the billowing dirt cloud, it was Aeron who was making the trouble. Her eyes slipped past the pale girl and into the shaking wilderness behind, searching for a flash of the warlord.

But in this vision there was no sign of either he or the indolent younger brother. Everything went oddly still and silent within her head. The sound of cracking rock and breaking limbs and shattering glass faded away under real and true fear.

Sudden movement from behind, and Kagome broke free from the vision, was up on her feet, spinning around to raise her sword and block the attack from the wind demoness. Their swords clattered and a shower of angry sparks flew off the weapons as they collided.

She dug her feet into the earth, gritted her teeth against the pressure against her arms. Kagura's face hovered inches from her own. They were locked, almost body to body.

The demoness' strength was superior. She could easily overpower Kagome and wipe her head from her shoulders. But as they strained against on another, she could feel the tenuous restraint in the other woman's arms, lined in her eyes.

Green eyes narrowed and with one hard shove and an angry cry, Kagura was stumbling backward. A battered and damaged sword flashed, caught over pale skin and dragged crimson up from beneath.

Onigumo's demon stumbled away, gaping at the Protector who held a sword dripping blood.

Above her, on the lip of the basin, the trees parted as a tall, familiar shape appeared.

"Kagome!"

Kagome's eyes did not move from the adversary before her. "I'm fine, Aeron. Where are Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha?"

On the lip of the crumbling land mass Aeron tottered gracelessly.

"I don't know."

"Find them!" Kagome barked.

"But-"

"Either do that or get rid of that demoness monstrosity because right now you are ruining my concentration!"

From the corner of her eye she saw him hesitate, noticed his hands were absent of their staff, and then saw him turn and run into the haphazard land.

Kagura's eyes remained locked on Kagome's and for a very long, endless second, they were frozen, hatred lighting the air in between.

And then Kagura lunged, and Kagome was forced back under the barrage of attacks. She fell into her head, the steps and the measures she had taken to survive. It was second nature now, to raise an arm, to pivot and turn, to block, to dodge.

'_Left, right. Bring your arm up. Don't lose focus. Watch me. Watch my hands. Watch the weapon. Does it matter where I look when my sword goes a different direction_?'

Inuyasha's voice in her head.

Her shoes scuffed along the dirt. She stumbled. The demoness was too fast.

'_Never, ever give up. Do you understand me? You fight until you can't. You fight until you die. There is always someone better. Always. Know that and be prepared. You'll get sliced up. Damaged. But pain can be forgotten. It doesn't last. Death does._'

Stupid man. He was always right about the sword in her hands.

'_Someday you'll fight on your own. That's why you wanted to learn wasn't it? A few scratches can be healed. A hand can be reattached. Learn to hold your own and you'll survive. _

Why, she wondered, as thoughts bounced around in her head, unrestrained, did he sound so damned wise now that she was staring her own death in its eyes?

_'But,_'_he'd said, watching her with those mischievous eyes,_ _'we'll always be just behind you, so you won't have to fight alone for long.'_

But where was he now? Why had she sent one of them away?

Because, one day she'd have to fight on her own. And for whatever reason, because of fate or her own folly and foolishness, that day was today.

Kagura moved in a blur. She was almost as fast as Sesshoumaru, faster than Inuyasha. And where Inuyasha had always held back, Kagura did not.

The sword cut through a muscle in her upper arm. Kagome hissed and dropped back. Her left hand dropped away from the hilt of the sword, useless.

Kagura was breathing heavily and on her face she wore pale determination, a frightening mask.

"I know what you are," she said lowly, eyes blood red. "_He_ knows what you are. You aren't safe. He will stop at nothing to possess the jewel. He's already changed his plans. He already knows what his future holds. Do you?"

The pain in Kagome's arm was becoming almost unbearable. Her knees weakened, but her right hand remained gripped around the sword, holding it before her with what little of her strength remained.

"Do you know your fate, Protector? What lies ahead?" A sneer crawled across her pretty face, streaked with dirt and sweat. "You will die. All of you."

Her sword arced, came down over Kagome's own and threw the weapon from her grasp. Kagome stumbled back, eyes flying to the blade. It was too far away to reach. She would never make it. The creature bent and picked up Kagome's sword and tossed her own aside.

The demoness was advancing again, the sword moving. Pain in her right arm, a slice of metal through skin.

Kagome swallowed a cry of pain. Kagura took the opportunity to raise her pale hand. The impact of the backhanded slap sent her reeling toward the ground, but the demoness' hand fisted in her shirtfront, stopped her from falling to her knees. The dark creature pulled her upwards.

The tip of the sword pressed into Kagome's abdomen and she tasted blood in her mouth. Her hands flew to her weapon, gripped it tightly, the edges cutting into the skin of her palms.

"Listen to me closely, Protector." Kagome lifted her eyes, and ignored the crimson weeping into one. "You will all die." Her voice was a whisper of malice and fury; it thundered low, shook with power. "But not before you take _him_ with you."

Kagome stared up at the woman and for a brief second she thought the demoness would gut her, end her life right there.

But then she was speaking low and urgent, something dark and unfathomable uncurling in her words.

"He is making a weapon. A sword. He had a spy in the monastery. The monk told him what you were. He knew he could not win now, knew he would be defeated. He is using dark magic, threading it into the weapon. The creature? The girl in the forest? She is the first made from this depraved sorcery, the unfinished blade. There will be more. More powerful and dark and deadly. He will die and leave his power in the sword. It will resurrect him."

The hand on her shirt shook her violently. "Listen to me girl! You cannot stop the completion of the weapon. He is well hidden and I cannot afford to lead you to it. There are worse things than death and I will not experience them again. Destroy the weapon, kill the demon. Send him to the underworld and seal him there forever. Make it so he can never return. Obliterate what remains of his wretched, despicable soul."

"Why are you doing this?" Kagome rasped through pain.

Kagura sneered. "Do not think I do it for you. Do not think that I have changed my side. I am from the dark and the depraved. How else could I resort to treachery and betrayal? How else could he?" Her carmine eyes narrowed on the Protector's face and the malevolent evil that stretched across her face was so great and terrible, Kagome thought she had never seen anything so darkly beautiful and terrifying.

"He betrayed me," Kagura snarled. "I gave up my soul for him, wandered through the depths of hell. And he tortured me, questioned my allegiance. After all these centuries, after all…after all of it, he shattered my allegiance with him." A vicious smile curled her lips, "He will fall. He will fall because of me. And I will relish the day he is returned to hell. The day the devils can tear him apart."

The sword tip pressing into Kagome's stomach was suddenly reversed, the hilt shoved into human hands. Kagura's cold fingers wrapped over hers.

"We are from hell and there shall we return."

And then Kagura shoved the blade through her stomach and ended her own life. A high, startled cry fell from Kagome's mouth. Horrorstruck, her shaking hands fell away from the sword hilt, and she stumbled backward, falling to the ground.

Kagura's body slumped to the ground, blood seeping from her stomach to pool beneath her and mingle with the dark soil. The crimson in her eyes seeped away to black, and she stared glassy eyed at the sky, her breath leaving her in one final sigh. Her hands went limp, twitched once and lay still.

Kagome's stomach rolled and she covered her hand with her mouth. She was faintly aware of the mantra she whispered under her breath, over and over again, "Oh, god. Oh, god."

Her arms were bleeding heavily and her face still stung from the strike. Her head was spinning with the demoness' words, a new fear taking root under her heart.

Onigumo knew. He knew what she was. He knew where they were.

_He had always known. _

Her eyes flew to the edge of the land where the earth had collapsed under the sorcery from the new demon he had sent.

She had to get to the jewel.

Struggling to her feet she passed by Kagura's unmoving body, her feet dragging through the dark blood saturating the ground. She made it to the collapsed soil and earth, and somehow, even with her arms screaming agony and her head swimming so, she managed to haul herself up and out of the valley. Roots of toppled trees served as her ladder, sheer desire and determination her fuel. Her hands scrabbled against the loose land, snagging weak tree branches as she hauled herself over the edge.

Breathing harshly she rolled over onto her back and stared up into the dark mist hanging in the sky. Her arms lay limp on the ground, shaking with residual pain and overexertion. She frowned up at the sky, hidden behind the dark cloud of old magical smog. Her right arm reached around in the dirt, searching for her steadfast and sharp companion.

It was then that she realized her sword still lay in the middle of the valley below, buried inside the demoness. She sat up, eyes wide as she leaned over the weakened earth lip, stared through the blood dripping onto her lashes and toward the figure far below. The silhouette of her sword gleamed, winking through the gloom.

A twist and a turn within her middle, the creep of fear up her spine.

The second adversary had returned, was moving through the trees like a ghost, walking ever closer to Kagome, sitting weakened on the edge of the land.

The protector pushed herself upright and scuttled away into the trees. With stifled groans of pain she ran, weaving a trail through the upturned woods, tossed wide and high. She ducked under roots, climbed over felled trees, fought her way through the branches of the broken forest.

She could feel the churn of the demoness and the sudden lunge of gravity.

"Shit, shit, shit," she cursed brokenly as she burst through the forest growth.

A great a terrible force rose up over the trees and from the corner of her eye, and turned, lifted her face to the sky, and felt the rest of the world fall silent.

What little light fell through the dark magical clouds glanced off the crystalline radiance of the thing. It stood high and tall seemed to reach up into the sky. It was as clear as the clearest water of a lake, perfect and pristine. It reflected and radiated, infused fear and wonder into the tiny woman wavering in its shadow.

A true paradox, a glass beast with indomitable strength staring down the woman with green eyes.

The great creature reared, spread crystal wings wide, arched its long neck, flashed glass and mirrors into the darkened day, and snapped its jaws toward the woman standing frozen beneath its magnificence. In the middle of its broad chest Aeron's staff glowed and burned, caught with magical fire. The dancing flames licking along the staff radiated outward from the scales of the great creature and bounced light and rainbows into Kagome's eyes.

It might have been beautiful had it not been a dragon that, at that very moment, was preparing to kill her.

Kagome hesitated only a moment before she turned, stumbled, and ran.

It caught her in a clear eye, followed her cumbersome movement. With a graceful arc of the neck it opened its mouth and snarled a soundless rumble. She ducked and crashed through the dead underbrush. Streaks of light shot past her and the dull thud of glass embedded against the dead trees with hallow thuds.

Kagome bent low and ran, using her hands to cover her head. The dragon felled the path behind her, took long, graceful steps and had her between its forearms. She darted to the side, rolled under a large root protruding from the ground and scrambled back up the slope.

The breeze riffled her torn and bloody clothes.

_Run_.

She tumbled, threw her arms up to protect her head from the rough roots hanging in her path. Behind, the dragon saw her move, and she could feel the demoness approach and channel her power through the mirror.

The ground thundered, the dragon breathed in. It was right behind her. She would be ripped to shreds. It was going to kill her.

She could feel the overwhelming sorcery of the warlord, felt the sword in her head. He was nearby, somewhere, hidden in shadow, stirring slowly, moving formerly lax limbs.

Her feet pounded over the ground and dust and mist wafted around her.

She could feel the heat from the fire embedded in the creature, feel its eyes upon her back.

"Sesshoumaru!"

The dragon swiped, she ducked, rolled, crawled, was on her feet again. Overhead, trees shattered and exploded.

Ahead the demoness appeared. She stepped up and out into Kagome's path, face placid and calm.

Kagome felt the unearthly tug of its magic begin to reel her in. Her head felt light and dizzy, her thoughts were swirling away from her and sucked into the void behind the glass.

Behind her the dragon. Before her the demon.

And beside her Sesshoumaru, leaping from the shadows.

He hit her hard, gathered her up in his arms, bundled her off into the shadows. They rolled, once, twice, three times. His hands wrapped around her head and neck, pressed her into his chest. Rocks and shards of glass dug into her back. Her eyes swam in dark dizzying circles.

And when everything stopped, Kagome wondered when they had descended into hell and if they would survive the climb out.

* * *

Aeron fought his way back down the steep slope, resisting the urge to turn around and run back toward Kagome. What if she was wrong? What if she couldn't fight the demoness?

He couldn't worry about that now. He wanted to, but he couldn't.

He had to find Inuyasha and Sesshoumaru. After the explosion of Sesshoumaru's power he had assumed the other two men had made their way, quicker than Aeron possibly could, to Kagome's side. But they hadn't. She was alone, worse of the wear and demanding that he find the only two men who _actually_ knew how to handle themselves.

And they had left him to deal with the new demoness with her mirror and the wicked power within. She was fast and quick, but moved with lethargic heedless care. Before Sesshoumaru's magic had erupted, she had successfully altered the face of the land, and just after, she had disappeared into the thick chaos, as dead and dark as before.

Aeron was, he decided, quite displeased with how everything was turning out. He had expected the Taisho brothers to be much better coordinated than this. But then, it was hard to deny the overwhelming power of the demoness and dragon she had summoned. Their own overpowering magic had been used _against_ them. The impressive attack they had unleashed in a stupendous moment of disarray had not ended their troubles but worsened them.

Aeron, who was still grasping the innumerable amount of information flying around in his head, a product of his new found magic, was reasonably certain that did not often happen. He couldn't be sure, but as he leafed through the vague memories rooted in his mind, he could not readily recall a single time in the Mage's long history when magic had been reworked to form a giant glass dragon.

No, he concluded, as he slipped between the dark trees, it seemed this was something new.

Something new and dangerous and unexpected.

That the two warriors could not dispose of their enemies was more than disconcerting. It was positively frightening.

And here Aeron was, without his weapons, searching the undergrowth for the two most powerful men he knew.

Very bad, he concluded.

A flare of magic stopped him in his tracks. He peered through the darkness and saw the shadows shift and move.

A voice called out softly, "Here."

The sorcerer hurried toward Inuyasha, slumped against a tree. He looked as if he had been dragged a hundred miles and had then been promptly trampled on and beaten with sharpened sticks. But before Aeron could ask if the other man was all right Inuyasha grabbed the sleeve of his robe and tugged him down into the shadows.

"Where the hell have you been?" He snarled angrily, peeking out from behind the tree to search the woods with his eyes.

Aeron was not really in the mood to be verbally attacked so he settled down next to Inuyasha and replied just as harshly, "Looking for you!"

The man glared at him and reached for his sword, stuck deep within the dirt. "Is Sesshoumaru with Kagome?"

Aeron frowned, "No, I thought he was with you."

Inuyasha went very still and his already pale face went a shade greyer. "Where_is_ Kagome?"

Aeron closed his eyes.

"_Where is she_?"

A hand shook his shoulder and Aeron turned to look into Inuyasha's dark, wild eyes. Very slowly he said, "She was fighting Kagura."

Inuyasha swallowed hard and then moved as if to stand and run. Aeron snagged the back of his jacket and pulled him back down to the cool earth.

"What is wrong with you?" The warrior whispered harshly. "She could be dead or dying. What the hell were you thinking leaving her there?"

In the distance Aeron felt the power of the rings, the staff, burning bright and strong within the beast. He could feel the growing power of the demoness, surging within her circular mirror. For a very long and tired moment he was silent, and then, with greater grace and composure than he thought he could ever possess he said, "She is not helpless. She can do this. She has to. Leave her. She knew what she was doing."

Inuyasha struggled against the hand on his clothes. "You're insane. Let go. If you don't I swear I'll chop your hand off-"

"Shut up!" Aeron barked roughly, holding the other man still. "You think I wanted to leave her there? I didn't. She's the Shikon Jewel, Inuyasha. She's smart. You taught her how to fight. Regardless of whether or not we like it there will be times when she is forced to do things on her own. For all we know the fate of the world was balanced on whether or not I listened to her.

"I have to trust that Kagome knows what she is doing. I'm sure she would place that same confidence in me. We may protect her and willingly sacrifice our lives for her but we are also her friends. I_trust_ her. I do not doubt the belief that I placed in her. And she is not so stubborn and selfish that she would disregard help when she needed it. She asked me to find the two of you and that is what I am doing."

The dark fury on Inuyasha's face slowly slid away, and the man looked up into the trees and the probable direction of Kagome. He worked Aeron's words over in his mind until the anger and brash heroism had faded into the shadows they sat in.

"Now," Aeron continued on, "are you going to sit here or am I going to have to seal you to this tree?"

Inuyasha's head whipped around and a horrified expression flashed across his face.

"You can do that?"

"Well, yes, I'm actually quite good at it. Suzu taught me when-"

"Never mind," the man ground out. Somewhat bitterly he murmured, "If she dies…"

"If she dies I will let you kill me. I'd expect you to."

They lapsed into wary silence, watching the trees with mounting anxiety. Inuyasha sighed distantly, and cast a cagey glance at Aeron. "You're not a half bad mage. I thought you'd be much worse."

Aeron raised an eyebrow, unamused. He didn't begrudge Inuyasha much though; after all, stilted conversation was better than going crazy with worry over the absence of the Protector.

"And those lemon bars you make are pretty good too," Inuyasha finished somewhat sheepishly.

An ironic little half smile crawled across Aeron's face as he wearily passed a hand through his hair. "Thanks. You're an impressive warrior. You've taught Kagome a lot."

"How would you know?"

Aeron shrugged and carefully looked around the tree, searching the distance for any sign of Kagome or Sesshoumaru.

"She told me," he answered quietly. "She speaks very highly of you."

Inuyasha remained silent and Aeron allowed him a moment to digest his words.

"What else did she say?"

A small laugh caught in his chest, but he managed to cover it with a cough. "She said once that you reminded her of the brother she never had. And that you make her laugh. And there's no one else she'd rather learn the sword from." He thought for a moment before adding, "And she said once that she wished you and I were friends. Though I don't know why."

Inuyasha snorted harshly. "Me neither."

"Maybe," Aeron started haltingly, watching the other man's reaction, "because she thinks we could learn from one another. We come from very different places but we are here for the same reasons. More or less. I think she holds great respect for you and for some reason she's always been fond of me. Perhaps she thinks that we'd get along well, or make a good team, if we could put our differences aside. But then," he finished lightly, sniffing indignantly, "Kagome has always been full of silly ideas, so it would make sense if this was one of them."

He could see Inuyasha watching him from the corner of his eye. The man stared at Aeron's profile as if he were trying to see inside his head.

"Kagome's smart," Inuyasha voiced into the dark, "even when she does stupid things."

"Yes," Aeron agreed, "she is."

"She's probably _not_ wrong," Inuyasha admitted begrudgingly.

"Mm," the sorcerer hummed, treading lightly.

"I mean… she does trust you. And I trust her. And you are a pretty good mage for such short notice." Aeron resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "And those lemon bars _are_ pretty good." He did roll his eyes then. "She's probably not wrong," Inuyasha amended, though not without some wary hesitance.

"So," Aeron started slowly, "you think she's _right_?"

"I guess."

"That we could be friends?"

The man shrugged indifferently.

Aeron smiled, utterly bemused.

"One condition though," the warrior murmured stiffly.

"That I make more lemon bars?"

An unintelligible grunt was his reply.

"Deal."

Inuyasha cleared his throat uncomfortably and then said in a somewhat louder voice, though still quiet enough to hide their position, "Where do you suppose Sesshoumaru is?"

"I hope not dead." Aeron muttered. "We're going to need him to get out of here."

"Eh, he's not dead. It takes more than this to put him down." Inuyasha thought for a moment and then added, "It's rather annoying actually. Nothing ever seems to faze him."

"He is quite stoic," Aeron concurred.

"Anyway, we should probably find him. Or maybe we shouldn't? Maybe he's planning something."

"Wish he would have told us."

"Me too."

"Should we move?"

Inuyasha looked out into the forest once more, carefully glancing around the rounded curve of the tree's base. He stiffened suddenly and recoiled.

"What?" Aeron hissed. "What is it?"

"It's that glass nightmare." Inuyasha carefully peered around the edge of the tree. "Is that your staff in its chest?" He queried incredulously.

"Yes, why?"

"What is it doing in there?"

Aeron frowned and sat up on his heels. "I'm not entirely sure. I just kind of winged it."

Inuyasha whipped back around and snarled harshly, "You winged it? You _winged_ it? I take back that bit about you being a decent mage. You're going to get us all killed."

"Well, if I kill the dragon in the process would you be a happier camper?"

"No."

"I guess I'm not a very good mage then."

"At least we agree on that," Inuyasha snapped.

Aeron slowly unfolded his long legs and motioned for Inuyasha to stand. "Come on."

The two men moved away from the tree and snuck into the darker shadows. The underbrush was dead but still tangled thick and it provided adequate cover. Aeron let Inuyasha go first and watched with slight concern as the man hobbled along, holding one hand to his ribs while the other was preoccupied with the blade in his hand.

"When did you get your sword back?"

Inuyasha cast him a withering look, clearly not in the mood to chat. "What?"

"You threw it at the demoness. I thought it might have run her through."

Inuyasha shook his head and inhaled a shaky breath. "Missed. That damned dragon was on top of me and then Sesshoumaru's spell went wild and my swing was off and when everything cleared I grabbed it and headed for cover." He paused, grimacing, his free hand massaging his side.

"Are you ok?"

"What? Yeah. Fine."

"You don't look fine."

"I've just used too much magic."

Aeron did not believe that for a moment.

Ahead, through the trees, the outline of a familiar shape caught his eye. "Inuyasha! Look, it's Sesshoumaru. He's-"

Above them, along the slope of land the dragon thundered and the brush cracked under its weight. The demoness was moving, gathering her power and beginning to suck at the land again. Aeron turned back toward the creature and saw Kagome, bloody and covered in dirt, burst out from the trees.

Her emerald eyes were wild with fright. Behind her the dragon snarled and snapped, reared and prepared to strike. A flare of power drew his eyes away from the grotesque sight and toward Kagome's path, where a tiny figure in white had appeared, weaving her magic in her mirror.

Horrified, Aeron moved. He sprinted toward the oncoming creature of crystal as Kagome whipped past, his azure wall of protective magic rising high, stopping the dragon in its tracks.

Over the din of crashing foliage he heard Kagome cry Sesshoumaru's name.

The dragon bore down on him; he looked over his shoulder, saw the warlord stir and start, his eyes fly wide. He moved in a blur of white and gold, tackled Kagome to the earth and rolled her out of harm's way and into the safe haven of shadows and dark.

Something shifted behind Aeron, a presence at his back.

Inuyasha stood behind him, tall and strong, rolling off his weakness and fatigue in favor of grudging determination.

"Know what we're going to do?"

"Not a clue," Aeron responded easily as he stared down the dragon, but feet from his face.

"I guess there's something to be said for winging it," he growled disapprovingly.

Aeron smiled and raised his hands, already gathering shattering power.

"I guess there is."

Gold and blue merged and rose.

And together they were the warriors two against glass and the empty nothingness, the evil from the mirror.


	43. The Rosary

_I hope finals haven't stolen your soul, too. _

* * *

Your boy is like a memory. 

With some sense of touch and a melody.

Your girl, she's a renegade.

A hurricane that keeps you there, safe.

- Stars, _Look Up_

**Chapter 43**

**The Rosary**

Kagome's back hit the solid girth of a tree and an uncontrollable shout of pain left her mouth. Sesshoumaru's hand was already across her lips, smothering the agonized cry that she uttered into the quiet. She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain and waited for the agony to ebb.

The warlord crouched before her and pressed in close. Kagome felt the faint tingle of awareness where his fingers pressed against her mouth. Slowly, she allowed her eyelids to creep open. He was listening intently, head cocked, keen eyes sweeping the darkness. They were in the midst of the darkest shadows, hidden underneath an undisturbed copse of trees.

Kagome tugged gently at his wrist. Sesshoumaru held a finger up to his mouth, silently asking for quiet. She nodded gingerly and slowly he removed his hand from her lips. The two remained utterly still and listened to the sounds in the distance. Around them the air crackled and creaked under the power of a half demon and sorcerer.

Sesshoumaru turned to her, his face dark and veiled.

"We do not have much time. What happened? Tell me quickly."

"Kagura's dead," Kagome informed flatly.

Sesshoumaru's gaze turned dangerously sharp. "How?"

"She killed herself. That's not important." Desperate eyes looked up into his. "He knows. Onigumo has known all along. The spies from the monastery told him about me. She said he is making a sword that is infused with his power."

A very dangerous expression crossed over Sesshoumaru's golden eyes, and Kagome shrank away from the cold suddenly radiating from him.

Huddles against the base of the tree she hurried on, "She said that he would die but that the sorcery he was using would resurrect him. She told me that we had to end him. Once and for all. To obliterate him, I think she said."

"That was the plan."

"Yes, but this sword-"

"Would explain the dragon and demoness."

"Yes, about that. Is that a flaming dragon made of glass that just tried to eat me or did I hit my head too hard?"

Sesshoumaru frowned, apparently not amused with her poor attempt to lighten the situation. His hands moved to her head and quickly healed the gash above her brow. Fingers slipped to her arms and a moment later she was given sweet relief from stinging pain. His hand moved to her cheek and traced the bruises across her dirty skin.

"Why did she tell you all this?"

Kagome felt a faint quake work its way up her spine as a shiver resonated where his finger hovered. "I think she mentioned a betrayal or some such thing."

Truthfully she was having a difficult time remembering, what with him leaning so close. It seemed a ridiculous notion that he could make her forget about impending doom in the shape of a giant fiery glass dragon, but there she was, quickly losing all thoughts in her head.

"A betrayal?" He sounded quite skeptical and looked it too.

Kagome gave him a faint shrug. "You know what they say about scorned women."

"No, I do not."

"Oh. Well. Hell has no fury like."

"I see." Clearly, he did not. "Where is the jewel?"

Kagome breathed out shakily and closed her eyes. In her ear she could hear the delicate murmur of the nonexistent breeze, still alive and well, still calling her name. Her eyes opened and she pointed over his shoulder. "That way."

"Can you get to it?"

"Provided no demoness or dragon blocks my way, yes."

A faint smile turned the corners of his lips. "I will handle those obstacles."

"I hope so. You seemed prone earlier."

His eyes narrowed ever so slightly and his frown returned and she laughed, relieved, almost jubilant. "Sorry. I'm just glad you showed. Just in the nick of time. Like always."

"Are your injuries sufficiently healed?"

"Yes."

"Good." He reached to his waist and unbuckled the nameless sword. He quickly passed it into her hands. "Take the sword and get the jewel. If all else fails we run. Do not worry about the others. Worry about the gem. And though it is futile to demand, do not injure yourself again."

He stood and pulled her up with him, stared out into the melee.

His profile was lined with the radiating light glancing off the creature he was to destroy. He was dark and defined to her eyes, haloed with danger and death. He was strong and capable and like every time she was near him, she was struck with the sudden and overwhelming understanding that this man- this _creature_- was going to save the world. Right then though he was waiting for the moment to act. His mind was turning, bidding his time until the moment he was to spring and throw himself into battle. A battle that he would win, that would lead them to the next fight, until finally, one day, he would defeat all.

Her eyes fell away and down to the ancient weapon in her hands.

"Let me lift you," Kagome murmured to the sword, mind turning quickly, an undeniable hallow want suddenly carving deep into her heart.

The unmistakable sound shattering glass rocketed through the air. Kagome's head jerked up, her eyes narrowing on the shadowy distance. Aeron's magic was strung high and long, like a note sustained.

Above her Sesshoumaru shifted, began to move from their darkened place. But Kagome reached, snagged his wrist and pulled him back. Hesitant fingers moved to his collar, pulled his face down. His head bowed, and then his cheek brushed against hers, lips touching her ear. His breath tickled the dark hairs curling at her temple, threaded into her mind and swept away all inhibitions and thoughts of the future.

What lay in that moment was nothing of the past or supposed destiny. It was nothing but what it was: the moment that had been interrupted, just before they ran headlong into another adventure. A simple second between a warlord and the woman he watched over, free from the ties and binds of the world outside the shadows, the prison dragging them down.

She could not find words to speak. There weren't enough to express her relief that he was alive. That she was alive. That they had lived, that they survived and thrived in this stupid, idiotic moment.

So everything had taken a turn for the worst, and somehow, with one of his hands touching against her back, his face brushing against hers, she found that she didn't give a damn. Onigumo would come for them. Hell would open wide and try to swallow them whole. Kagome would end a life with her own hands. They would bleed and break and fall into shadow. They would most likely die. Suffer irreplaceable losses. The demon knew what she was, would come for her, maybe use her, discard her, kill her. Maybe ruin everything. He was wrong and twisted and terrorizing their world. He had cast them under his dark shadow, had pulled them into a web of time and fate and duty and bonds and blood. He had torn their lives down and built them back up around an epic quest and a cantankerous sword. He had killed, had made them watch others die.

But Kagome didn't care.

She threw away all those thoughts, forgot them completely, and lived then, in that moment.

Because when the warlord was near she was safe and protected, secure in the knowledge that he would never fail her.

With greater bravery than she thought she possessed, Kagome raised her face.

Her eyes fell upon the jagged lines across his cheek, those dependable, foreign lines, a dark reminder of everything he was. He smelled like the wet, damp earth and the dust that flew through the air. A shimmering powder of glass had settled over his skin, and she could see flecks of bright blood weep from infinitesimal cuts.

She breathed in once, inhaling the smell of fire and earth and blood and leaned toward him, traced her lips across his high cheekbone, the lines across his handsome countenance.

The coppery taste of blood still tinged her mouth and the gentle touch of her lips against his cheek brought the tang of dirt and rock. The rough edges of those minuscule glass shards pressed against her lips, but still she lingered, brushing affection across his skin.

She felt him breathe in, the fingers on her back curl into the fabric of her shirt. In an enduring heartbeat he had lifted his head and his lips were brushing across her forehead to press against the injury he had healed, just above her dark eyebrow. And then skimming down, over an eyelid, against the high rise of her cheek, and finally, the corner of her mouth, an echo of a kiss.

Her eyes fluttered, and the world around them faded into what should have been. Against the darkness they were night and day, a simple second of naïve purity.

And then he pulled back as an explosion rocked the earth and they regained their balance separate from one another. The rest of the world had darkened, and there in the shadows, their tiny moment of peace was stolen away from desperate hands and eyes.

They retracted, but her hand lingered, tangled against the material of his chest. His body turned, but his fingers pressed against the small of her back. And their eyes met once more before he unsheathed his father's sword and turned and slipped away, a streak of light, a king, a warrior, a warlord from the past forgotten.

Kagome watched him go, gripped the nameless sword close, and fled the darkness, embraced the wind.

* * *

Aeron reached within his robes and withdrew the thin paper talisman, his deft fingers flipping through them, memory circling the ancient words around his head. His eyes traced upwards and toward the chest of the creature, still burning with an internal fire. 

Although he had shrugged off his rather ill thought out plan to lodge his weapon into the chest of the great indomitable foe, he was more than relieved to see that his action had not incinerated his staff. It remained whole, embedded between the thick, sharp scales of the dragon, its ringed end still burning with elemental fire.

That was good, he decided, as the beast lowered its head and caught him in its sight, ready to snap and tear.

That was the general plan, which, in the moments following Sesshoumaru's deadly attack, had gone horribly wrong and had sent him running up the hill after Kagome instead of finishing what he had started.

His hands stilled over one scrap of paper. At his back Inuyasha was crouching, keeping low to the ground, sorcery pooling in his hands.

"I have a plan," Aeron started slowly, looking up from the thin paper clutched between his fingers.

Over the edge of the talisman the dragon loomed. It seemed to take its cues entirely from the demoness, and at that moment, it seemed she wished to suck their souls into her mirror rather than lose them to the jaws of the beast. Aeron could feel her approaching at his back; feel the swirling maelstrom from within her weapon.

"What?" Inuyasha asked distractedly, his attention narrowed to the gold magic twining around his fingers.

"Take care of the demoness."

"That's it?"

"I'll get rid of the dragon."

He felt the other man turn an incredulous gaze on him. "Are you serious?"

"Yes," Aeron snapped, feeling slightly defensive. "I know what I'm doing."

"Could have fooled me."

But Aeron didn't argue with him and Inuyasha let it go because at that moment the power from within his hands erupted in a snarl of energy and power. Streaks of illumination ripped through the earthen floor, blowing dust and debris off the ground and into the air.

Dark blue magic rolled off Aeron's shoulders and out from his eyes, turned the already dark day into night. Through the haze he could see the creature moving, following the demoness' bidding to kill.

The talisman in his hand glowed and caught fire. The flames reflected in his dark eyes, danced and licked over his fingers. Through the rising color the dragon's head appeared. The air swirled over its surface, billowed out and up into the sky, the pinnacle above. Pressure pulled at the dry land at his feet, cracked along the already fractured ground.

A smile crawled across the lanky man's face, and with a careless gesture, he raised his hand, let the paper slip through his fingers and flutter to the ground.

It floated down like a feather and then in the moment it took for a breath to pass, the thin scrap of paper exploded and Aeron raised his hands, dragged up a shield of magic to protect himself from the cascading rocks boulders.

Like gravity had been upturned, the land heaved upwards, blasted back and over the great beast before him. The creature reared, screamed silent agony. Underneath the onslaught of sharpened rocks and pure, unaltered pressure, the glass edges of the beast caved and broke, drifted off into the air.

The beautiful neck swung back down and the brute opened its mouth, launched knives of glass toward the mage's heart. Aeron's eyes fell closed, and the darkness in his hands deepened. The shield of radiating power strengthened and deflected the dragon's fury. The glass missiles burst against the wall and showered the ground with rainbows of light.

He gritted his teeth and opened his eyes, took a single step and moved the protective safeguard of magic forward. The beast swiped at the wall of azure and Aeron's arms trembled against the impact. His fingers shook under the excessive force, his muscles struggling against the magic housed within the monstrosity.

Fury burned in his chest, ignited in his eyes. He strained, pushed against the power, took another step, dug his feet into the earth.

Behind him he could feel the quick movements of Inuyasha's animalistic surge of sorcery. The warrior darted through the battlefield, sending out volleys of quick, successive shards of power. The demoness deflected each, spinning her mirror to absorb the power. The strain of magic continued to unhinge the earth, and beneath them the soil cracked and moaned, creaked and split.

Aeron brought his hands together, struggled to thread his fingers with one another. They resisted, like opposite magnets forced together. He grit his teeth and a harsh cry tore from his mouth. His fingers touched, caught, were pulled together with a force so great that the reverberation sent shock waves through the air.

Around him the wind churned, whipped at his hair and robes. The shield surged, vibrated once and exploded, ripping through the dragon with such power that the creature was thrown, end over end, to crash into the thick trees in the distance.

Aeron sank to a knee, breathing harshly.

Just a moment.

He needed only a moment to rest.

Breathe, he told himself. Breathe.

Get ready, get ready for what is to come.

He cast a quick, circumspect glance over his shoulder and caught sight of the warlord.

Good, he thought, relieved. Good.

Slowly, gingerly, he rose and walked through the ripped and jagged earth, through the glass spikes and shards. Walked to face down a dragon, a lone man to his fate.

* * *

Kagome ran through the trees, following the call of the wind. 

_This way_, it murmured, leading her over a broken trail.

In her head she repeated, get the jewel, get the jewel, get the jewel- Until it was the only thought in her head, the only thing pushing her on.

The battle had not reached this side of the land, though it had been pulled and snared by the demoness' mirror. The trees were bent or felled to their sides, roots upturned and reaching toward the sky. For the second time that day, Kagome stumbled her way up the steep slope to where the great tree had fallen. Where the jewel lay.

She wanted to stop and sink into the earth and fist her hands in her hair and scream and cry and rock until everything faded away. She wanted to melt into the trees and forget the words that Kagura had delivered to her. She wanted to bury herself into the arms of the only person she knew, knew without a doubt would always, always be there if she fell.

Damn him_. Damn him_.

Everything was cracking under the strain. The earth, the sky, the warriors. Kagome. She could not take it all. It was too much.

So she only thought of the jewel and how she would get to it. Her world was hinged on that tiny piece of fate, buried within the dead bark of an ancient tree.

The wind sighed and lulled. Before her the tree leaned, turned awkwardly, no longer anchored into the land. It clung, barely, to the sipping soil. The trunk was parallel to the ground sloping beneath. Kagome slowed to a stop and stared up at the branches lying in the dirt, gouged into the rock and soil.

The demoness' power was undeniable. The power from her mirror had successfully buried the top of the tree through layers of rock and strata. The entire hillside had been pulled partway down the original slope and a half-mile west.

Kagome's eyes traced up the skeletal branches, over the unmoving ribbons lying limp, and to the thick trunk of the tree. There, through the darkness, she saw the gentle glow of the great power, still whole. Relief washed over her and she scurried around the branches to the base where the roots gathered exposed.

Warily, she threaded her hands inside the fibrous lifelines and began to climb. She hauled herself up and onto the tree. The great monument seemed to sway warningly, its tenuous hold in the dirt beginning to slip.

Kagome took a careful step, and then another, felt the whole platform swing beneath her. A thousand voices whispered on the wind, called her name and coaxed her toward the pure radiance, lying serenely within the dark wood. She stopped over the light, stared down at its low burning power.

_Here_.

She dropped to her knees and unsheathed the sword in her hands. The rosy luminescence lit her features, threw the shadows away. Her fingers itched, her heart thumped hard against her ribs. Her hand reached out and traced the ridges of the tree, felt the heat of the honored gem, and then she retracted, wrapped her hands around the warm metal of the crimson sword hilt.

The tip of the dark blade touched gently against the tiny orb, buried within the dead tree. Kagome leaned against the blade, sank under the weight of what she was to do and all that she had learned and how far she had come.

"Is this right?" she asked faintly to nothing and no one. "Is this what we are meant to do?"

_Yes_.

Her dark brow drew down over her face and determination burned bright in her eyes. She raised the sword, stared down at the spot, and then plunged the weapon within the tree.

The blade tip sank in and hit something hard and powerful. The metal shook beneath her fingertips, rattled until she was forced to let go. Light peeked out from underneath the dark point, streamed high. From within the trunk of the tree wind began to move. As if she had opened a door the air rushed out from beneath the weapon, the force of a hurricane. Her hair whipped back and away from her face and she struggled to remain on the tree.

A great force unwound itself, uncoiled and burst forth from within. Kagome reached out and ripped the sword from where it was lodged, successfully opening the gap to the might of the wind. The haze from within the dark confines grew, washed away the darkness creeping close.

Through the whipping violence of the gale she felt the call of a voice, resonating deep within her soul. Enthralled, her hand reached into the swirling tunnel of air and down into the carved wood. Her fingers brushed against the smooth surface of the tree within, hewn and fashioned to hold a tiny gem safe and secure.

Her rough, calloused fingers touched the smooth facet of a legendary fragment, and as they did, the world went still, the wind continued to erupt and churn and move and wrap her within. And inside her mind, deep within locked away memories and history, she felt doors unlock and throw themselves wide.

Her vision tunneled into dark and faded into day. She saw the forest when it lived, green and full and lush. Bamboo trees rose high and tall, swayed in the gentle breeze. The canyon and its floor had rolled with lazy, verdant grass. The great tree had overlooked the basin, had listened to the air as it swirled around beneath.

The wind had whispered through the forest, and somehow, sometime, after Sesshoumaru erased the demon from the earth, after he had knitted the gem back together and saved the world from doom, this portion of the weapon had found its way to the tree and its wind.

Shadows passed under the eaves of the heavy boughs of green leaves. People in awe, bowing in reverence. They had built a tiny shrine, nestled it between the giant roots of the great monument of the land. They had prayed over it, kept it safe. They had listened to the way the breeze whispered around the basin beneath, the way voices seemed to carry within.

They had protected the earth and the gem and saved it for the day another would come for it and keep it safe.

But time rolled on and magic waned and sorcery faded. Great and powerful men appeared. They carried darkness and death with them, used their sorcery to imprison and kill. The Hunters had spread across the land, erased magic and stole power for their purpose.

The forest faded as man encroached. The Hunters faded too. As did those who watched over the land and the wind, the jewel hidden within a tree.

And slowly everything had died in the wake of progress, in the absence of magic.

Kagome watched the earth weep and wilt; the trees wither and fade. They became ghosts, preserved ever in their death, the last gate, the final obstacle to the jewel, lying unguarded. The remnants of magic clung to the air, hid the place from view. It was forever trapped in its death, wound around the tiny force, The Shikon Jewel.

And as Kagome's fingers brushed the weapon, she saw herself step out from the trees flanked by three men and their sorcery. She watched herself fight her way up the hillside and felt the relief of the elemental wind.

The vision fled as suddenly as it had appeared. She was left to stare down at her hand and what lay within.

There, shining against the dirt and blood ground within the creases of her hand, lay a fragment of the Shikon Jewel, shining with a brilliance to rival the sun. Within the jewel she felt the voice of the wind. It hummed pleasantly before whispering gently in her ear.

_You are very small_.

Kagome laughed through the sudden blinding tears stinging in her emerald eyes. "That can't be helped."

_But you are very strong._

"If you say," she whispered, a tear rolling down her cheek and off the end of her nose.

_I believe I like you_, it seemed to murmur. The zephyr rolled like a child's laughter, blew away the moisture gliding down her face.

_Perhaps you and I are to be friends_.

"Perhaps we are," she agreed softly, fingers curling around the tiny thing. "Perhaps we are."

In the distance power tumbled and combined, rolled into a conflagration of unsteady chaos. Kagome's head whipped up as the earth shook. A soundless cry of fury ripped through the air and jostled the tree beneath her.

Her eyes narrowed on the flashes of light and red glow, dancing around from within a dark cloud of dust and magical fog.

_Your friends need you. Go to them. I will help._

With one part of the future within her hands, Kagome fell back into the shadows and watched as the wind blew apart the world in her way.

* * *

Sesshoumaru watched as his brother sent a wave of blood red sorcery over the earth. The five arcs of light collided into one, ripped at the land and left deep trenches in their wake. The small demon raised her mirror and took a step backward, bracing herself as the power absorbed within the glass. 

He heard Inuyasha curse harshly and raise a defensive bout of power as his own attack was twisted within the weapon and thrown back out, screaming through the air. Sesshoumaru watched dispassionately as the power collided against the weak barrier and exploded, sending Inuyasha tumbling back a dozen feet.

The warrior's golden gaze fell to his hand and the bright white light fusing at his fingertips. He crouched down low and waited patiently, watching as the threads knit together to form a curving strand of white-gold. The strand within his hand hissed angrily, burned at the ground. Little furrows of flame sprang up wherever the power touched dead, dried grass.

With an emotion akin to boredom, the warlord rose from his crouch to stand tall and unmovable amidst the field of broken land. Through the shifting, dirty air, he could see the faint outline of the creature Onigumo had created, awaiting his next move. He could feel her dark eyes on him, those soulless, empty pits.

He stepped forward and walked toward her, each purposeful stride crushing the fragile rocks beneath his feet. The sorcery within him, connected to his sword, ancient and old, thundered into the day. The air rippled a warning, seemed to sway as he moved. The wind picked up and swept the hanging magic away.

His eyes glowed dangerously, housed a hidden, vicious smile.

The demoness stood before him.

Their gazes crossed and clashed.

Fire burned around his feet.

He leapt, raised his arm and twisted his wrist. The whip-like power slashed, snapped through the air with a scream. The creature from the void, the tiny nothing of washed out color faded white stared him down, brown eyes widening as the lance of white power tore toward her. The mirror twinkled, and as the lance of light descended, she sucked it into the nothingness.

The whip caught inside the glass. Sesshoumaru's arm shook under the force anchored within the mirror. His feet slipped in the uneven rock and dirt, pulled him toward the demoness now holding him prisoner.

With grim determination, he wound his hand further around the acid light, tightening his hold. The necromancy from within the malevolent weapon began like a riptide pulling him out to sea. It tugged him over the ground, slowly, easily.

Behind the mirror the demoness remained stoic and unmoved, watching him as dispassionately as he watched her.

A smile crawled across Sesshoumaru's face. He felt his thoughts flutter around his head and then disappear, swallowed whole. The edges of his clothes whipped away like mist, his skin and mind fading into oblivion.

The whip vibrated, hummed with horrible high-strung power. The creature tightened her hold of the mirror, her already pale fingers going white under the grip. Though her face gave nothing away, he could see the struggle within, the fight she waged to claim his soul.

She dragged him ever closer, ever nearer, each increment of the blazing light disappearing into the void of glass.

He lost touch with his memories, his thoughts, his power, his dominion. It slipped through his fingers, all of it, everything that comprised him, Sesshoumaru. His soul flickered against the strain, the call of the black trapped in glass. But still her held the power in his hands, let it pull him further toward the end.

She almost had him, had ensnared him totally.

Triumph blazed in her eyes, curved on her mouth. He could taste the demon's exhilaration on the air.

He was so close he could touch her, and he was fading, his life slipping up and over him like mist over a lake, clouds through the sky.

"You will end now," the demoness said, and her voice dropped without sound, an echo of life never given.

He sank to his knees, black closing in.

And then green, emerald, ebony.

A hand fell to the demoness' shoulder and the creature's dark eyes flew wide.

Behind her stood Kagome, blazing with light, enveloped in a hurricane of wind.

He had seen in her in the far distance, uprooting trees and the ground, running toward him, wrapped within the element that had sought her out.

Her dark hair whipped off and out of her face, her eyes reflected the fires of fury, like a high summer's day. The hand gripping the girl demon's shoulder glowed with rose light. In her other hand the nameless sword, angled between two shoulder blades.

The weapon leveled menacingly, and through his slipping vision he saw the dark, thunderous rage, black as night roll over Kagome's lowered face.

Her emerald eyes met Sesshoumaru's and into the demoness' ear she said, low and clear, voice tinged with unrestrained fury and power, "Tell your master to go to hell."

And then the Protector ran the wicked puppet through.

The sword tip sliced into the girl-demon's back and out of her chest cavity to shatter the mirror in her hands. It cracked, shuddered and broke, exploded into a million pieces. From within white light blazed, burst forth to blind.

Under Kagome's hand the demoness gasped as her form began to crack and crease. In an enduring second the creature shuddered and then shattered into the glass she was made from, showering them with rainbows of light.

Sesshoumaru felt the sweet relief of his soul as it flooded back in. He swayed and bent forward, one hand out to steady his descent. Kagome was already on her knees; crouched in the sharp glass, fingers gripping his shoulders, her worry pervading the air.

"You stupid man! And you think I take risks!?" she admonished angrily, her hands shook from the adrenaline, her voice gave away her waning strength.

Sesshoumaru, however, was completely untroubled. She had done what he would have expected her to, had planned that she would. She was Kagome after all, strong and smart and powerful.

Powerful, certainly. More so now than ever before.

Her skin hummed with vibrant electricity, and in one partially clenched hand she gripped a portion of the Shikon Jewel.

That, though, was far from her mind, obviously. She was so absorbed in her anger with him, so much so that she had forgotten altogether that they still had a dragon to contend with.

He stilled roving fingers as they traced over his jaw and looked up to meet her eyes. She scowled at him. He was fine and well, as if a demoness had not nearly swallowed his soul. His eyes swept over her face and his hand reached up to touch along her lips. They were split and bleeding, skin marred from her worrying teeth.

"Careless."

His thumb brushed over her bottom lip, glowed faintly gold and white.

And for a brief moment, in the middle of darkness and debilitating truth, he was caught, staring at the woman behind green eyes. She was battered and bruised and stronger than ever before, almost a warrior as great as he.

Inuyasha appeared beside them, stumbling and weak legged.

"Are you alright?" He smiled down at Kagome, and Sesshoumaru could hear relief in his words. The younger Taisho gripped the woman's shoulder in his hand, assured himself that she was fine and alive. She cast him a weary smile and looked back at Sesshoumaru, their eyes locking in place.

Still he studied her bruised face, caked with dried blood and dirt. Hallowed want was numb and hidden underneath, but it had been there for so long, so very long, that it did not seem a silly thing, to be so enthralled with her at such an inopportune moment.

After all, he reasoned, watching her watch him, who knew what the future held? In a second's time everything could change. So he could take a selfish second and marvel at her, brand her into his memory each time they lived and survived.

The ground shuddered ominously and then he was breaking their gaze, hauling her up to her feet. He took back his sword from her and wrapped her elbow in his hand. Inuyasha looked upwards and into the distance, his face immediately shadowed. Kagome and Sesshoumaru turned to face the wreckage of the land and saw the last warrior grappling a beast.

The dragon thrashed on its side, held in place by tenuous magic.

Aeron was alone, crouching down low, one hand extended, his lips murmuring feverishly. On his face he wore a painted expression of utter and total concentration. His magic was soaring dangerously, powerfully. Inuyasha took a step forward, staring down the future.

"Inuyasha," Kagome started warningly, reaching a hand toward him. The man dropped and ran, ran like he had for so long, when he tried to escape the world. "_-wait_! _No-!_"

Inuyasha was a hundred feet away and Aeron was forming seals with his hands, cool and calm, in control of the throttling magic whipping through his hands. The dragon's claws ripped through the land, scant inches from the absorbed mage.

"What is he doing?" Kagome asked breathlessly watching Inuyasha close in, a blur of black and red. Fear rose in her voice, ratcheted high. "What is he doing? Oh, god, Sesshoumaru, do something. Stop him!"

The mage's fingers moved, twisted in ancient incantations and spells. Sesshoumaru's eyes narrowed on the beast's chest and a flickering note of dread lodged in his middle, caught his breath and pierced his heart. He dropped Kagome's arm, started forward, sprinted, gathered a shield in his hands, his eyes trained on the men before him

That stupid, idiotic, foolish man.

Inuyasha was too close; moving in as Aeron completed his spell, ready to save him from his own actions. But the mage required no assistance. He wielded his power with expertise and easy acceptance, carefully weaving trails of enormous power through the thrashing threat.

The dragon was struggling to its feet, standing, and still Aeron knelt, lips moving and voice shaking with power. The staff embedded in the creature's chest glowed bright and immaculate, turned from burning red to blazing white. The beast moved, almost had the man between its forepaws.

A dull thud of silence passed and then the talisman hinged to the powerful otherworldly gift exploded, cracking and shattering the dragon's form. Light blazed from within, shone out through the cracks that creased and widened, fashioning themselves into deadly spikes and shards.

Aeron's fingers flashed, began dragging up a wall of powerful protection.

Time slowed.

Sesshoumaru reached, extended his hand.

His magic raced along the broken forest floor.

Inuyasha moved, shouldered Aeron out of the way and into the ground, threw himself before the mage and dragged up a weaker barrier to the exploding force.

The malevolent beast shattered, glass flying into the melee.

And Inuyasha's magic broke under the strain.

And Sesshoumaru's magic was a second too slow.

And behind them Kagome screamed Inuyasha's name as he fell, weeping crimson into the earth.

* * *

Onigumo watched as the sister mirror shattered beneath his face, pierced by the sword that had run his demoness through. The magic that bound his sight to her weapon snapped and shattered like the glass she was made of. 

He could feel, as if it had been him, the sword pierce her back and drive through the weapon she held in her hands. He had watched as the Warlord, his nemesis, smiled, met his eyes through the mirror, and then faded away as the magic was lost.

The demon doubled over in excruciating pain.

A hammer fell against the sword.

The fires blazed.

The blacksmith carried on with his task, unbothered by the sharp sounds of agony echoing up and out of the darkest pockets of shadow.

Kagura was dead.

He had felt her life force slip away on the wind. Her death had caused him little pain. She had long since reclaimed her mind and thoughts from him. She had almost been a free thing, just barely bound to him by a strand of life. It was only that tiny existence of sorcery between them that alerted him to her passage through the grey gates of the beyond.

For such a selfish being, Onigumo felt her loss deep within his chest, a place where a real man might have housed a heart and soul.

Perhaps it was only the aftermath of the sorcery he had used to form her, returning to his beaten and battered body, and nothing more. But the loss of her was great, it tore at him, ripped and clawed at him more fully than any evil or despicable act ever had before. Even as that bit of his power returned he rolled in agony, bled into nothing.

Before him, the blacksmith continued to work his sorcery into the unfinished blade, ignoring the excruciating agony playing out on the dark floor. Occasionally he would raise his hand, pull more of Onigumo's power from his waning shell. But he was not invested in this loss, did not care.

To the blacksmith it was a test of the blade's forging. And that test had failed.

Sesshoumaru had defeated his minions, like always. Only this time, it had been with the aid of supreme dark magic, unformed but powerful. The blacksmith, it seemed, was not pleased that his forging was culminating in a sub par weapon.

Onigumo no longer cared. He had long since lost the part of him that desired the sword. It had been warped and twisted to fit within the blade.

He was, cowering there in the sand, nothing more than a shell, slowly losing shape and form. He was split and uncentered, without a place to house his mind or thoughts. He was trickling away in the wake of power greater than his own, all encompassing and furious.

Malevolence he had been breed for and from. Evil he had committed. Heinous acts were his life force.

And yet, in the depths of the cave by the sea, Onigumo, could find no words to describe the thing his soul had merged with. He was overwhelmed by the pure wickedness of the spells, ancient and old, twisting his spirit into something new and unseen.

He stared down at the fractured glass beneath his pale face and saw his eyes, no longer carmine red and filled with cool, hard rage, staring back at him, black and lifeless. Darkness rolled down and out his eyes, like tears, like blood. He gasped under the sorcery, heaved lungs that no longer worked to bring in air. For a moment in between his fading mind and what came, he thought he might have heard Kagura laughing, high and loud, safe within the pits of hell.

And as his awareness left him, he saw the sword, gleaming with black fire, and somewhere within the beaten metal he saw himself trapped, forever and for all of eternity.

* * *

Suzu woke with a start, her heart pounding furiously within her chest. Around her the dark pressed in close, like a suffocating blanket. There were no lights in the room, and the stars were hidden outside the damaged walls. 

She sat up, fumbled a hand along the ripped tatami mat floor. Her fingers curled around a brittle parchment and under her breath she whispered an incantation. In her hand a talisman flared with fire, scattered to the shadows and enveloped her in a warm glow.

Her dark eyes immediately sought out the corners of the room, searching for intruders and dark things unseen. Between her sweating fingers the fire glowed harsh and bright, dispelling some of the horrible anxiety roosting in her stomach, lighting along her spine.

The innate feeling that something was wrong did not leave her. Not even as she stood and searched the room with her power, let it rise up and over fallen beams, and trail out into the hallway. Fear etched memories into her mind. Memories that she had sworn to throw away, to forget and bury.

Worried, the woman stooped and gathered her weapons and strapped them into place. Wrapping her robes more tightly around her arms she hurried out into the hall, following the faint flare of power just out of sight. The corridor echoed strangely with the shifting walls and slowly crumbling floors. Low sounds of cracking wood bounced strangely in the night air, and more than once, she stopped to turn around and search the night.

Ahead, through a doorway, the flicker of light spilled out into the black hall. Resisting the urge to run, Suzu hurried her way to the doors and peered inside.

It was a large room, with marble floors and more candles and tapers than she could hope to count. They were all dark now, but at one time they had been lit, as the wax from their forms had spilled down numerous tables and onto floors, a testament to their use. There were wooden shelves, high and long, reaching nearly to the domed ceiling above. Some had been overturned and toppled, their contents strewn about the floor.

But Suzu could see someone had taken the time and effort to pick up each manuscript, each bound book, and place each on the tables strewn throughout the room. Books were stacked high, rolled parchment placed between each pile. Torn pages had been collected and placed under weighted books and shattered pieces of wood.

Cautiously, the woman stepped within, searching for the source of light, flickering around the shadows. She stepped around the corner of a broken set of shelves and saw Sota leaning against a windowsill, staring out into the dark depth of the night. He did not immediately notice her presence; so lost in his own thought.

She sidled closer and snuffed the flaming talisman in her hand. The movement caught his eye and he turned slightly, to regard her. An emotion like grief quickly surpassed the mild surprise, and he pulled his gaze away from her.

The window he leaned against had lost its glass, but it looked as if he had attached boards and beams to keep the elements away from the precious books inside the chaotic library. He had moved the makeshift shutters to see out and let the night in, and Suzu suddenly understood what she had missed before.

The night was not black, but tinged with the deepest blue.

And like it did so often, memory welled and returned, took form in the shape of twinkling dark eyes, busy hands, and the azure color of a man dead to the world.

"You loved him like your father," she said quietly, reverent and careful of his feelings.

"Yes," he said, without pause, "I did. I still do."

He thought for a moment and Suzu watched his dark brow draw down over his equally dark eyes, lost in the past. He opened his mouth to speak and drew in the sharp, biting air. And then he laughed, but the sound was dull and fell short of natural warmth.

"This was his favorite place. There were only two places in the entire monastery that were virtually unaffected by the battle and this was one." He looked over his shoulder and toward the massive bookcases, standing like soldiers to guard precious words and pages.

"And the first?" Suzu inquired quietly, her looming anxiety returning with full force.

"I can show you," he said quietly, his dark eyes meeting hers, "if you like."

Not trusting herself to speak, she merely nodded.

He slipped past her, snagging the lone burning candle resting on a nearby table, to lead her out into the darkened halls and passageways. They swept upwards into the night, over broken staircases and toppled walls. It took them a very long time to reach the pinnacle, the highest heights.

When they stepped out of the fragmented structure the cold wind nearly swept Suzu off her feet. Before them, what little light the hidden moon gave, she saw a long narrow bridge, hanging perilously above a fall. It was covered in snow and slick ice, shattered wood and broken fragments of red tile.

The sounds of the world died away and Suzu was left with her heart thundering in her ears, staring at the vague outline of an enormous room, pillared and rising high against the backdrop of the mountain face. She took a shaky step forward, breath short, fear crawling along her spine.

The itch of memory and indefinable thoughts began to creep at the edge of her blank mind, slipping into the shadows of her soul. She let out a shaky breath and it curled up into the night to fade into the stars and low hanging clouds. Another step and then another, pulled, gravitating toward the place that hummed of clinging magic, tasted like the laughing man who had disappeared from the face of the earth.

And then she was across the slippery bridge, standing amidst the giant, crimson pillars, staring at the ancient inscriptions carved into their girth. The place seemed to whisper, seemed tinged with misty grey, a substance that she could not quite see, but knew, somehow, that it was there, curling up and around her body, through her soul.

The magic was thick here, it echoed in the floor beneath her feet, each fiber within the wood, each painstaking etched carving. The air seemed to ripple as she turned in a slow circle. Over the quiet of the night she heard the faint whisper of something other, as if from very, very far away.

A shudder worked its way up her spine.

Very quietly, so much that she was almost silent as she spoke, she asked, "Where is my father's body?"

She saw Sota's eyes flash as he looked up from the frozen floor. He stood in the middle of the dangerous bridge; unable and unwilling to cross to the place the Mage had fallen.

His voice dropped, without echo, trained and empty, full of loss and remorse, "There was no body, Suzu."

Her eyes slid closed and something wrenched and snapped and in its place epiphany fell, quiet like rain, soft like snow, leaving her infinitely cold and alone.

Here the world cracked a little, within this strange room of power and ancient words. Here her father had held open the gates of the underworld once more, had pulled inside the enemies that would have swallowed his companions whole. His hands had parted the air, and his power had saved, and in the aftermath he had disappeared into the grey, and let the doors close behind him, his life, his world.

Here, she thought, looking into the cold air, swimming with ice crystals and a sudden, intermittent dusting of snow, here, the place between life and death was weakened, and here the grey loomed.

She could almost see it now, the tendrils of what lay after, dancing and mingling in the snow, leaking out from whatever hole her father had created and untied with deft fingers and magic, with power and loyalty true. The faint voices, not quite real, too near to be imagined, filtered into her ears. For the briefest moment in time, Suzu thought she saw a gap in space, open and twinkle, thought she saw the grey mists of after, thought she smelled damp earth and rain, the green of high trees and eternally living land. And those voices, those murmurings in her ear, wept out from the crack and crease, were the souls just out of sight, traveling to those destinations within the grey mists and rainy days.

And inside the haunting moment, a second that lasted forever, she tunneled and fell to earth, saw Aeron's face, contorted with horror. She smelled blood and smoke, saw the gleam of things sharp and dangerous, too close to be safe, so close they would kill him, kill them all, saw his eyes widen, felt the earth shatter and snap and-

And then she was back in the cold, under the dark night sky, staring at the air in front of her nose.

Sota had moved to the edge of the bridge, hovering just near the floor of the vacant space.

"Suzu," he murmured urgently, "what is it?"

She felt faint. Her limbs tingled as fear spiked and lulled, a dull note of knowledge settling in its wake. Unseeing, she turned to him.

"I have to go. Now. I have to leave."

"I will go with you." Her eyes snapped to his face, sharpening. More slowly, he said again, "I will go with you. There is nothing for me here. I think your father would have wanted it."

Suzu nodded stiffly, reminded of her own words behind the walls of her cloister, and looked up and around, her eyes trailing over the red beams stretched to and mounted into the shadowy roof. Looking back at him she asked quickly and curtly, "Is there anything you need?"

"Only what is on my back."

"Good. We'll leave from here."

He stepped off the bridge and into the room, walked toward her, his frame shadowed in dark and illuminated in moonlight. He stood before her, reminded her so starkly of Aeron that her heart shook and almost broke.

"What is it?" He asked again, soft this time, as if he were afraid of the answer.

Her hands rose and she took his fingers into her own, positioned them around her hands. She formed the seals with cold fingers and palms between his tented hands. Between them a glow began, a soft rose. She looked up and met his eyes as power began to throttle and to whip around them.

"They are in trouble."

And that was all she needed to say to a man who had seen his life turn over and end in grey.

And then they were slipping in and out of the world, wrapped in a windy orb, flickering like a candle. With one gesture, a simple movement of fingers and thought, they were gone.

Beneath the room the monastery sat, cold and alone, dead, frozen in time and space, forever a testament of what had been lost.

* * *

There was so much blood. So much. 

It spilled out into the ground and ran in little trails over the cracked earth.

His head was heavy in her lap, his face pale, like death.

Shards of glass winked at her from his chest and neck, lodged deep and secure.

Her shaking hands touched gently along his temples to brush the hair from around his ashen countenance.

Beside him, Sesshoumaru crouched, hands splayed across his front, white magic burning bright enough to blind.

Behind her, Aeron swayed, looking grey and sickened. His dark eyes stared down at the wounds, the pools of black slipping to the ground.

His voice caught in his throat as his mouth worked, pushed to say something.

"I had it. I had the shield. He- I- He thought I didn't- I told him. He pushed me out of the way… I lost control of it..."

Neither Kagome nor Sesshoumaru registered his words nor looked up from Inuyasha's limp body.

Kagome glanced up from the pale face beneath and into the warlord's eyes. There was something dark, something deep and sharp twisting within. It was so very different than anything she had ever seen in him before that her breath caught hard in her chest.

For the first time in a long time, Kagome was frightened of the power her wielded, the power he possessed and could use in a moment, if he wished.

Underneath his shinning palms shards of glass twinkled and appeared, pulled upwards and out from the healing body. Sesshoumaru's left hand moved swiftly, touched along Inuyasha's upper chest and neck, the sorcery burning gold.

Kagome fought down the panic rising in her stomach, making her sick with fear. She was afraid to speak, afraid of the hard look on Sesshoumaru's face.

She had no way of knowing how long they sat there, watching a warrior heal his brother, a man who was half as great, half as strong, brash, and silly, and loyal and strong and brave and broken and flawed, just like the rest of them.

Her legs had gone numb by the time Sesshoumaru's magic died back and the last piece of glass was pulled up and out of skin. Inuyasha had not moved, and Kagome's fingers slipped down his neck, pressed against his pulse, found it, and rejoiced, even as it pattered weakly underneath her shaking fingertips. Her other hand brushed his silver locks from his forehead, and with that affectionate gesture she felt tears gather and sting her eyes.

She looked up at Sesshoumaru, slowly unfolding himself from he ground.

"We must move. Now. It is unsafe." His hooded gaze landed on Kagome, kneeling in the dirt and glass. "You have the jewel?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"Good."

He bent, hoisted Inuyasha up and off the ground and onto his back. The man, still unconscious, slumped against the Warlord's back. Sesshoumaru rose and walked to Aeron and paused at his side.

Kagome watched, fearful, frozen.

"You are well enough to move."

"Yes."

"Then do so."

And then he brushed past the sorcerer, disappeared through the rising mist and sorcery slowly rolling away on the sudden breeze. Kagome's gaze fell away from his retreating back where the second greatest warrior she had ever known clung like dead weight.

Beneath her knees the glass sparkled and shone, like a bad joke it glared up at her, mocking the dark moments that had descended to shape and change their lives.

Again and again, she thought miserably, reaching out to touch a large sliver of crystal, again and again they faced opposition, and each time they seemed to lose something, slip a little farther toward the brink of darkness and despair. The glass around her knees was tinged with dark blood and the earth had long since swallowed Inuyasha's life force into its soil.

She wiped her eyes free of blood and grime, blinked into the shifting dust to see a large hand appear, offering her a way up and out of the chaos she was seeped within. Taking the proffered fingers within her own, she allowed the mage to pull her out of the maze of crystal glass waiting to cut them down.

They had just made it past the giant obstructions, the last remnants of the dragon he had destroyed, when Aeron stumbled. Kagome could tell he was drained, nearly dry of magic. She shifted, looped his arm around her shoulder and wrapped one of hers around his waist.

"I'm sorry," he said as they followed the sure footsteps of the unbreakable warrior and he leaned heavily on her, depending more on her footsteps than his own.

Kagome paused at the edge of the broken tree line, stooped and picked up Inuyasha's pack, forgotten amongst the dirt and disorder. Slinging it over one shoulder she returned to Aeron's side and helped him move. In her free hand the gem glowed and warmed, reminded her that it was there.

"It's alright, Aeron," she heard herself say into the dull day. "It wasn't your fault."

"How can you say-"

"Because," she explained wearily, "because." More quietly she continued, "Inuyasha either cares about you enough to kill himself or he's wrong in the head." She chortled loudly to cover the fresh tears gathering in her eyes.

"I could have held the shield if he hadn't-"

"I know."

"But he did because he's thick headed and he protects everyone to the point of smothering them. So instead of feeling guilty perhaps you should be happy that you've moved up the ranks of his good opinion."

Aeron fell silent and thought for a very long time. It was not until they had passed beyond the strange hanging sorcery and into clearer air that he spoke again.

"What's wrong?" He wondered aloud. She felt his eyes on her down turned face. The hand resting against her shoulder squeezed and called her attention, silently asking her to speak. "Tell me."

"He knows," she said to the dirt at her feet, the roots they stumbled over. "Onigumo knows what I am. He's known all along."

She heard Aeron inhale sharply and then the arm over her shoulder pulled her closer, comforting and protective. But he said nothing, and she was grateful for that, because she had no more words to say over the rising tide of terror, greater now than ever before.

So together, wrapped in their trepidation, the two souls from across the world made their way home, trailing after the sons of the land.

* * *

They made it within Sesshoumaru's borders. 

How, Kagome was unsure. They were exhausted, hurt, tired, and, she felt it reasonable to assume, frightened. There were only so many ways she could be pushed and was finding, as she and Aeron shuffled through the thick undergrowth, that she was fast reaching her breaking point.

The sun was setting over the trees and outside the shade; the sky was turning pale shades of orange and gold. She was not sure how long they had been gone. Given all that they had endured; she was inclined to think it a few years since last they had seen the mansion.

In all reality it was probably only a few days, but to her bones and her heavy soul it might as well have been decades.

Although, she admitted to herself, there was a silver lining to returning, battered and bruised as they were. In the comfort of a very well furnished mansion, one mage could make a large batch of lemon bars and chocolate cake. It had always been Kagome's belief that baked goods could fix anything. So, not for the first time, she was infinitely glad it was Aeron by their side and not some other sorcerer who would probably not have such finesse in the kitchen.

Sesshoumaru had stopped within a small copse of trees. Aeron and Kagome drew in close, peering around the area with measured curiosity. They watched, worriedly and guiltily, as the warlord lowered his brother to the ground and turned to face them.

His ever-knowing eyes flicked to Kagome first, no doubt assuring himself that she was all right underneath all the dirt and dried blood and her pale, weak complexion. The piercing gaze lingered for a long, drawn second before he slid his gaze to the mage, tall and shadowy in the fading day.

"Come with me," he ordered.

Immediately Kagome sprang forward, leaving Aeron to sway against his staff. The woman caught Sesshoumaru's sleeve in her hand and she stepped close to him, stared imploringly up into his eyes.

"You aren't going to hurt him-"

Sesshoumaru regarded her stonily, and had she not learned fearlessness from him, she might have backed down and away, cowered against the base of a tree.

He took her elbow in his hand to disentangle her from him.

"I have no intention to harm the mage," he rumbled, and to her distant amusement he sounded slightly snubbed.

"You don't?" she asked, thoroughly confused.

Displeasure contorted his features, but she was too tired to care. "Stay with Inuyasha. We will return."

He slipped past her and she watched Aeron follow after him, a slow, lumbering giant.

"Wait! Where are you-"

Behind her, an injured sigh sliced through the air.

Kagome whirled around to see Inuyasha dragging himself into a sitting position against the base of a tree. He grimaced in pain and she flew to his side, relief washing her out, leaving her overjoyed and trembling.

"What did you say?" she murmured, squatting next to him, a daft grin plastered over her face.

His eyes slid open and he regarded her through a sluggish haze. "They went to check the house. See if it's safe."

"Oh," Kagome laughed, quite sure that she no longer cared.

"Are you alright?"

She raised an eyebrow at him. "I wasn't the one shredded with glass."

"Is that a yes?"

"Yes."

He sighed and let his eyes close. "Good. And the ungrateful mage?"

"A little tired but no worse for the wear." She brushed away locks of silver hair from his eyes, the way she would a child, affectionate and adoring. "I think his guilt is the worst affliction he is suffering."

"As it should be," the warrior snapped tiredly. "Stupid bastard."

"I'm sure he'll make more lemon bars to appease you," she offered gently, and laughed when his eyes crept open again. "And anyway, perhaps this will prove to you that he knows what he is doing now, and can handle what comes his way."

The look he gave her was skeptical and Kagome did not deem it a worthy time to argue. Nor did she think bringing up his reasons for sacrificing himself were necessary. His actions spoke for themselves and despite his pain and weakness she was almost glad he had thrown himself in front of Aeron. Because Inuyasha never did anything halfway. Especially when it was something he believed in. And apparently now Inuyasha believed that Aeron's life was worth saving, even if the mage hadn't needed a brash man- forever trapped in near infinite boyhood, darkened adulthood, and the softly echoing past- to so foolishly protect him.

But it didn't matter now because he was all right, or, she thought, bemused, he would be well with some time and a few baked goods.

The man sighed and his brow furrowed in slight pain. Concerned, Kagome edged closer to him, touching his shoulder with care.

"Are you ok?"

He frowned and she knew, that had he the energy, she would have been pinned with a furious glare. This, she concluded, must have been severely wounding his pride.

Men!

Even after all this time amongst one another, they were still concerned with their strength and pride.

Silly, ridiculous, stupid, men.

"I'm fine," the man ground out testily, a growl reverberating in his throat.

Kagome laughed and watched his displeasure further darken his face. "Stop being so cranky, you'll wear yourself out."

He snorted but didn't argue with her. Instead, he leaned back against the tree, and very soon she was sure he had fallen asleep.

She studied his face, flecked with blood and scratches. As it had been when first she met him, there was a youth to his features, a deceptive life and spark of indignant stubbornness that would make him eternally young. But he was much more wise than he let on and he had his share of dark thoughts and demons to battle, things that he wished he could change and forget, all housed within his heart, much more fragile than it seemed.

He looked like his brother then, under the shady trees. Lines of years were hidden invisible, but when he was tired and weary, weighed down by responsibility, he resembled his older sibling. For two men so different, she found it quite ironic that they should so often remind her of the other.

She sighed evenly and the hand that had rested on his shoulder slipped to his neck to touch gently at the faint lines of pink skin where his shirt was open and tattered, showcasing his battle scars. His rosary hung down his dirty apparel, at its last loop.

In their haste to leave the battleground they had forgotten to rewind it and cage his sorcery once more.

Perhaps, she mused tiredly, he would be more comfortable if he were not straining against its magic. Cautiously, so as not to wake him, she reached for the delicate wooden beads. Threading them in her hands she lifted the length of the necklace to loop it back around his head and neck.

And as she did she caught sight of the black cord between the beads, fraying and unwinding with steady ease.

For a moment she stared, her hands frozen midair, fingers clasped around the rosary.

Her eyes flew to his neck and chest, where glass had shattered and torn through flesh. The place where the subduing necklace had rested, where sharp crystal had cut and severed.

The black thread twisted, twirled, and then fell apart.

And one small, carved bead fell to the forest floor. And then like a waterfall, the rest followed the descent to the ground

Emerald eyes drifted down and watched; mute, as the rosary fell apart within her shaking hands.

* * *

_"You are never without it then?" She had asked him, indicating the intricately carved necklace twined around his neck. Around them the halls of the monastery glowed with warm lantern light as night approached. _

_He had smiled then, and something like pain had flashed through his dark eyes. _

_"If I was without it… bad things would happen."_

* * *

The dull beat of silence pulsed around them, and in between her shaky, thundering breathing; she heard the creaking sound of splintering sorcery, age old and unstoppable, finally breaking free. 

And when she looked up she found herself staring into crimson eyes and darkened, unstoppable fury. The soul of a beast, finally unleashed upon the world.


	44. Summer Suns, Winter Moons

**Chapter 44**

**Summer Suns, Winter Moons**

Suzu collapsed at the bottom of the mountain. Sota had no idea how she had made it to the top to begin with, let alone back down. To move them so far had drained too much of her magic but she was determined.

She had sunk to her knees and refused his helping hands, choosing, instead, to steady her breathing and close her eyes against the freezing wind and its ice, slowly gathering herself back together. She was determined to make it back to the others and though he wished he could convince her to rest, if only for an hour two, he knew it would be futile.

She was frightened, but her worry paled in comparison to her determination. She was very like her father in that respect.

Always a pleasant man the Mage, ever a twinkle in his eye. Even when he subdued his enemies or cut down another with his carefully constructed barbs he kept his strength and certainty. Only at the most grave moments had he seen the easy acceptance disappear into fiery, dark determination.

That same determination burned within his daughter as she crouched in the shadows of the mountain. She was gentle and calm, held the same amusement in her eyes. But like the Mage she was deadly and dangerous, fierce and indomitable when she had to be. Sota remembered the few times the Mage had spoken of his wife and her stoic ability to cut and kill. No doubt her drive and endurance was Suzu's too.

Gently, he knelt in the cold snow and took the woman by the shoulders. She raised her face and looked at him through the curtain of short, dark hair that fell before her eyes.

"Use my magic."

For a full and silent minute she stared at him in blank confusion. Her shoulders still heaved with the effort she had exerted and perspiration froze across her forehead.

"What?" she gasped, brow drawing deep lines as she frowned.

"Tap into my sorcery. You can do it."

"It's dangerous," she countered sharply.

He shrugged, unconcerned. "I care about them also, Suzu."

"I do not doubt that you do, but-"

Sota took her arms in his hands and shook her gently but firmly. "You wish to get to them. Use my power. I have more than it seems. I trust you. And the sooner you do the sooner we can help them escape from whatever trouble has befallen."

She pressed her lips together and stared hard at his face, thinking. The internal struggle played out in her dark eyes and he gripped her arms tighter.

"Do it," he ordered.

She frowned at him and narrowed her eyes on his face. Even as her fingers rose and touched his hands, began to drag his power up and out of his body and soul and thread it with her own, she kept his gaze captive, searching, rooting through her memory for the words she wished to say.

And when she spoke the words that formed were not the ones he expected to hear.

"You seem like a shadow of someone, Son of the Forger."

A ghost of a smile crawled across his face, and the rigid demand he had voiced slipped away into his gentle and graceful presence.

"That is because shadows belong to no one and nowhere, Daughter of the Mage."

Bright, dark eyes were unconvinced. "They belong to someone and somewhere. You only have yet to figure out who."

And though it was a small lie, they both knew, she closed her eyes and wound their magic together into red and rose, throwing light over the snow. And because the shadowy man who had lived so long by the fires and the forges had lost one father, and then another, he stayed inscrutable, made for memory.

Over the windswept mountain the wind sighed, and once more the pair flickered away into the world, extinguishing their sorcery as they disappeared into the night.

* * *

Aeron and Sesshoumaru made their way toward the mansion, creeping through the undergrowth with as much care as they could, tired as they were.

Aeron, Sesshoumaru noticed, was not very helpful in this arena. His limbs had long since stopped working properly and where the warlord was silent and circumspect, the mage could not help but blunder into low lying tree limbs and inconvenient bushes. But that, it seemed, was the worst of their worry because the closer they came to the house, the more the Sesshoumaru relaxed.

His magic, which had coiled like a spring, steadily ebbed away. Behind him, Aeron sighed as the tension in the air unwound.

"Is it safe?" the mage asked hesitantly, peering through the thick trees and toward the thinning land beyond.

Sesshoumaru flicked him a disinterested glance. "It appears to be."

"But that doesn't mean it is," Aeron amended tiredly.

Sesshoumaru was moving again, slipping through the trees and out into the lower gardens, the paths that led to the house. Before long they were passing by the dojo and down the stone steps, the mansions rising above the trees and bamboo shoots.

His eyes drifted over the house and the surrounding area, his low lying power dancing over the swaying trees and empty paths. Everything appeared to be in order, safe and sound.

Aeron hovered near the edge of the koi pond and peered at the house, perfect shape. The mage leaned heavily against his staff, his eyes tired and distant. Around his feet, not far from where he stood, something moved in the brush. The lanky man peered over the cascading vegetation near the pond to see a corgi, lying on his back, sunning himself with the afternoon rays.

Near him a woman from the house staff sat, idly scratching the tubby, furry belly of the spoiled dog.

Sesshoumaru walked around the overgrown plants to fix the dog and servant with a piercing stare. At the sight of the warrior both the dog and staff member jumped to their paws and feet respectively. Ajax barked and the warrior scowled down at the dog, which promptly sat itself on his feet. Rather than shoo him away he addressed the woman, bowing low before him.

"All is well?"

Blinking rapidly, eyes shifting between the mage and the warrior, she responded hesitantly, "Yes?"

_Apparently_, Sesshoumaru decided, as she peered curiously at him, all _was_ well. Of course it would be. They had only just raced across the land to save themselves from the possible danger Onigumo had undoubtedly planned for them. But, of course, everything was fine. Fine and simple, the calm before the storm. Resisting the urge to become very foul tempered, Sesshoumaru spoke quietly with the woman to assure himself that nothing was out of the ordinary.

Aeron, who Sesshoumaru was reasonably certain had never spoken Japanese, concerned himself with the corgi, whistling lowly to distract the thing from Sesshoumaru's feet. Ajax waddled his way toward him and flattened his ears against his head, regarding the mage through bright, brown eyes.

"Don't give me that. I'm giving you full permission to use my feet," the sorcerer muttered tiredly.

The dog cocked its head but remained firmly planted where he sat, so Aeron knelt and scratched behind his ears, watching distractedly as Sesshoumaru and the woman spoke.

There had been no change in the spells surrounding the house, no strange entities, no breaches in or near the mansion. The staff was safe, the house still stood, the only blatant difference between the days before they left and the moment they returned appeared to be the snowballing dominion of a stubborn dog.

More or less satisfied with the answers he received, Sesshoumaru dismissed the woman and turned to Aeron.

"There has not been, as far as my staff can tell, any disturbance in the surrounding area." Aeron stood, grimacing as he did, his bones and muscles creaking loudly in protest. Ajax jumped to his feet and wandered away, only to return a moment later, a tennis ball wedged in his mouth.

Both men blinked down at the dog before Sesshoumaru gave an indignant snort and returned his eyes to the tired mage. "We will check the surrounding area first, to be certain."

"Alright," Aeron agreed slowly, watching amusedly as Ajax dropped his ball on the uneven stones beneath their feet. "Which way? I don't really know these paths as well as Kagome but I…"

Over the sweet air of the evening, a line, a crack and a break resounded a silent echo, a vibrating string. Magic, old and complacent sprang to new life, snapped taut and hard and then shattered, shot hard out over the dark, an arrow through the ending day. A wire twining, unraveling, the soundless thud of something heavy, something filled with sorcery, dropping to the forest floor.

The world, in their quiet and undisturbed corner, went very, very still, and in the midst of his chest, Sesshoumaru felt his heart turn over. He pivoted, slowly. He could hardly force his limbs to move through that stagnant second in time. He stared into the trees as a strange shiver passed across his skin. Golden eyes shifted and narrowed on the path through the woods.

At his feet, Ajax growled lowly, hair on end.

Aeron must have felt it too, as he had turned and was staring with equal fervor into the darkened trees. The large hand clasped around the wooden staff gripped tighter and very softly the man asked, "What is it?"

Sesshoumaru could not answer him. He did not know how. It was a power he had felt before, many times. Only on each occasion it had been controlled and trained, hidden within a powerful subjugation spell. It had been housed in a soul restricted and bound. And now, standing frozen against the peaceful garden of his home, he was feeling the power unwind for the first time since it had been made.

"Can you seal the house? Protect all inside?" Sesshoumaru asked mutely, distantly.

"Yes."

The warlord was already starting forward. "Take the dog. Seal the house; make sure it cannot be broken. Anddo it now!"

And then he ran, leapt, and flew over the land, back toward Kagome and Inuyasha, alone in the woods.

The strange twining power was growing into something wild and ravenous, tingeing the air dark with its unbridled power. His heart caught in his throat.

He did not have it within him to play off his worry, to believe that this time, Kagome knew what she was doing.

_This_ demon she could not handle.

And what was worse, the man who had sworn to protect her at all costs was breaking under the strain from his uncontrollable soul. Because the thing inside Inuyasha did not care about promises or misguided affection.

It cared only for blood and violence and death.

The forest whipped by in a blur; like it had every time he rushed to the aid of that stupid, clumsy girl who so often found herself in trouble.

But he could not blame her this time. Not this time.

He could not curse her stubbornness or condemn fate for making her walk a path alone.

This was his fault. Only his.

Why had he not checked? Why had he not made sure the necklace was unharmed? He had known it was straining. He had carried Inuyasha across the land. He had known. He could have checked. Why had he not?

A knife of impossible, blinding fear shot straight between his middle. Adrenaline threaded into his fingers and legs, like pins and pricks of pain. Constricted, terror struck, he ran.

He heard the crash of trees and the high fricative snarl of power, growing and morphing as sorcery released and built.

Did she have her sword? Did it matter?

Go, he told his legs, go.

He stretched, slid over the land like a streak of light and shadow.

Just through those trees, just past the shadows.

A shape stumbled out, rolled over the ground. Kagome skidded over the earthen floor as if her spine had been broken and torn from her body. She was a knot of limbs and movement, propelled over the ground by the enormous strength of the beast between the trees.

Sesshoumaru bent low and prepared to gather her within his arms and shuttle her away. But in a flash of red and white, a body collided with his. They tangled and grappled, flew sideways through thin trees shattering brush and wood under the surge of sorcery.

Sesshoumaru twisted and snagged his brother's throat, shoved him against a tree, pinned him their with his claws. The other Taisho snarled, ripped and tore with his own sharp extensions, tried to work free of the iron grip around his neck.

Breathing heavily, the warlord turned his head and looked over his shoulder to see Kagome stir.

She groaned painfully and lifted her head. Claw marks were bright and blaring down one cheek and over her pale neck. They snagged over the old scar across her shoulder blade, the injury weeping with fresh blood. She stared at him a moment before her emerald eyes sharpened and she started to her feet, limping and holding a hand to her side.

Her ribs were probably broken. Her nose might have been, too. She was bleeding all over again, drenching her shirt. She raised a hand to her face and pressed hesitantly, staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.

"Stay back!" he snarled at her, wrestling to keep Inuyasha pinned.

She shook her head in disbelief as she wobbled dangerously on her feet, "I- It just disintegrated! The rosary just fell apart in my hands. I didn't know… I didn't… oh, shit-"

"It is gone?"

Inuyasha was struggling with real force now, tearing his claws into Sesshoumaru's arm and chest. His eyes sparked with unimaginable fire.

"The beads aren't but the magic is. I felt it evaporate into the air around us! And then- and then-"

And then Inuyasha had tossed her through the trees, had lost his memory to the untamed ire inside.

Sesshoumaru grimaced and turned away from her, using his other hand to shove Inuyasha back into the tree, his magic and power threading down and around his brother's thrashing limbs.

"The rosary is the only way to control him," Sesshoumaru started, staring into his brother's eyes. "There is no other way."

"Ok, ok, ok," Kagome breathed unsteadily, taking another step, her face screwed up in pain and concentration.

"Do not move!" Sesshoumaru thundered. "If we cannot find a way to control him you know what I have to do, do you not?"

Their eyes met and he saw her vision tunnel, her face go slack.

Kagome gasped and he felt her fear and anger drive deep, reflected in the sudden fury of the wind whipping through the trees.

"No! There must be another way! There has to be. You can't kill him!"

"I may have to," he whispered, so low his words were lost against the cracking tree and bristle of sorcery tingeing the air.

He pressed a hand against his brother's chest, pooled his golden sorcery there and held him against the wavering tree. The magic caught and he retracted a step, keeping his eyes pinned to the half demon run rampant.

He would break free soon. There was not much time.

Turning to Kagome he grabbed her elbow and pulled her along behind him. He stopped at a safe distance, though his eyes immediately returned to the captive, no longer brash and audacious Inuyasha, but something other, something foreign and feral.

He felt her hands touch along his, grip them surely even as they trembled. He looked back at her and spoke quickly.

"You remember the priestess? The woman who healed my arm, who told us of where Kaede lay? She-"

"She's Inuyasha's priestess," Kagome interjected softly.

"Yes. Do you remember the map I showed you within my library?"

"Yes"

"Where she was located?"

The woman nodded, and he could see her mind racing, her green eyes so piercing he thought she was looking through him.

"Yes, I do."

"If you can get there-" He lifted her chin and swept his hand over her abused nose, staunching the flow of blood, mending the hurt within. "If you can get there in time... she could help. She is the only one who can."

His hand brushed over her cheek and in a mad moment he tried to heal the deep scratches marring her face. There was no time to fix her hurts, no time. His eyes traced the deep slashes across her neck and shoulder. She would have more scars. Roving fingers swept to press against her side, as they had the very first time he had healed her injuries. In a breath her ribs were mended and his fingers were gone, preoccupied with pushing her away, saving her from more hurt.

"Take the mage. Go. Go now. I will hold him back as long as I can…" And in his trailing words they both heard the promise of what he would have to if Kagome could not make it back with salvation in her hands.

His fingers fell away from her and he pushed her, eyes burning fire as he watched her retreat. She stared back and him until the snapping of the tree broke their gaze, and then she was running as the warlord turned to face down his brother and stop him before he brought them all to their knees.

* * *

Kagome took the stone steps two at a time, vaulted over the koi pond and toward the bent mage, resting his hand against the mansion, murmuring underneath his breath. His eyes flew open when she ran up and past him to wrench open the backdoor to the house.

"Kagome! I'm sealing the house-"

"I know," she yelled over her shoulder, "I'll be back before you finish. Don't stop."

She sprinted down the long hallways, slipped over the ornate rugs beneath her feet. Down one corridor and up a flight of stairs, around a corner and through a set of double doors. She slid into the library and cut through the rows of shelves, knocking into precarious book stacks, sending age-old texts toppling to the floor.

Near the back she found the table strewn with maps and pieces of parchment with Sesshoumaru's handwriting haphazardly lain. Shaking fingers rifled through a stack of maps and pushed away the heavy tomes trapping forgotten scraps of paper beneath.

At the edge of the table a slew of items had conglomerated. A pen, a bottle of ink, the worn bag Kagome had carted down the mountain for the mage. Her eyes fell back to the layers of maps under the satchel and her fingers found the one she searched for. Tearing one out from underneath the others she turned to run-

And froze as epiphany stole her breath.

Although there was no time to waste, she turned, so slowly she must have been caught in a trance, to stare at the worn and torn pack, lying innocently on the tabletop. Her eyes narrowed and a harsh bark of laughter slipped between her parted lips.

She reached, pulled open the sack, and turned it over.

And out fell the nondescript Buddhist rosary- the one that she and Sesshoumaru had discovered on the first day of summer- hiding inside the folds of the pack. Her fingers snagged the wooden beads, held them up before her eyes.

She shook her head, incredulous.

That damned Mage. That ridiculously foolish sorcerer.

Sesshoumaru had been right about him.

He was such a liar. He knew much more than he let on. And he had been a good man, no matter how stubborn and powerful he once was.

She clutched the rosary in her hand and bounded out the library and through the house, now resonating with Aeron's magic. She burst through the doors and out into the evening just in time for the sorcerer to slap the O-fuda seal across the merging magic, protecting all inside.

Panting, she bent her knees and hung her head, gripping the map and rosary between her fingertips.

"Kagome."

He was shaking her shoulder.

"We have to go here," she said, shoving the map into his hands. "We have to go there and see the priestess, Sesshoumaru says that she is the only way."

"The only way to what?" Aeron asked darkly.

"The only way to stop Inuyasha."

"And what if she can't help us?"

Kagome looked up at him, a pained expression passing over her face as her insides twisted horribly, her heart cracking under the impossible reality of what could happen. Aeron's face darkened and a look of revulsion contorted his features.

"We can't let that happen," he said sharply, "We won't. If he's stupid enough to get himself in this situation then we'll be smart enough to get him out."

Had the dire situation not wrung all humor from her, Kagome would have laughed at his barb and the strange, sudden bond that had formed between a half demon and a mage.

"I don't know how we'll get there," she panted out; shaking her head, fear a harrowing knife in her gut. "It's far. If we don't make it there and back, provided she can help us-"

"I can get us there," the man cut in softly, watching her intently.

"What?"

With dark assurance he reiterated, "I can get us there."

Confused, muddled, Kagome shook her head, "But how-"

"Suzu taught me. I can do it."

Kagome straightened, ignoring the dull pain that swam throughout her body. "How?"

The man looked down at the map and back into her face, his own countenance drawn and grim. "You know how to get there?"

"Yes."

"Then we will make it."

Kagome was about to protest or demand and answer, when Aeron nestled his staff in the crook of his elbow and against his shoulder and brought his large hands up to the side of her face, fingertips hovering around her temples.

He looked down into her eyes and she stared up into his, entranced by the depth within, the necromancy that he housed within his head, his hands, his heart. Against the ending day she saw the glimmer of the sun twinkle in his eyes.

"Concentrate on the place we need to be. I'll do the rest."

Feeling faint, but unable to question his absolute certainty, Kagome closed her eyes and dragged up the dim memories of the place in the glade, the tiny hut where a priestess hovered, forever separated from the man who loved her.

Around them, the air began to move and churn. Her brow drew down in concentration, her head pounding with the sudden pressure. It felt as if her mind were being rooted through. A faint prod and a poke, a mild stab of pain. Through the haze and the rifling, Kagome realized she had felt this once before, on the roof of the world, when the mage had lived, before they had known what she was, before the world had begun to unravel.

A prickling across her scalp, through the memory she clung to, the world a sea of blue wind. The stress ripping through the air intensified, rocketing high and strong, squeezing the air from her lungs. She felt herself flickering in and out of existence, as if pulled in a million different directions. Like she was in two places at once, she was stretched and pulled and snapped and then-

And then it was over and the wind abruptly stopped, the power retreated from her abused lungs and head, and the ground beneath swaying legs rose up to meet her.

The grass against her face was lovely and cool. Under the gentle night breeze the blades of green tickled her bruised and abused countenance, pressed into the dirt. Vaguely, over the thundering inside her head and around her body, she felt Aeron sink down to the earth beside her, his breath laboring within his lungs.

Her eyes, swimming dizzily, sought him out. She saw his profile, illuminated by the last dying light. He was in great pain. With a groan and a sharp wrench of nausea she found her way to her knees. Between streaming tendrils of dark hair she spied the tall trees of the glade, the shadowy place where a hut lay.

Kagome's breath hitched in anxious fear as she realized no candles or lanterns burned within, that the small shrine was cold and empty, that it lay bare.

That the priestess was not in her home, the place she was supposed to be bound to, the place she had lived for so very long.

Struggling to her feet, Kagome staggered through the glen and toward the hut. She fell up the stairs and clutched at the wooden railing to haul herself up the last few, creaky stairs. She pushed through the wooden doors and lurched to a stop within the inner chamber, cold and shadowy blue.

"_Priestess!_"

Her voice tore out from her chest to thunder dully through the small wooden space, swallowed whole by the memories. The world swayed again and she reached an unsteady hand out to lean against the wall.

"Damn it, shit, damn it," her curses fell like leaden weights and she reeled her way to the back of the shrine.

Through another door and out the back and down into the grass.

No one. There was no one there.

Kagome willed her legs to move and ran back around the tiny hut to see Aeron trying and failing to raise himself up off the ground. She sprinted to him, touched his shoulder and eased him back down.

"W-where is she? Is she-" he coughed out, batting away her hands. He was still laboring under the stress of his sorcery, eyes screwed shut.

"Stay here," she murmured distractedly. "Wait."

She stood up from his side and stared into the darkness waiting beyond the glade. Leaping away from him she crashed through the thick foliage. She struggled under her exhaustion and the oppressive truth that pushed in and wrung her dry.

In her hands the rosary seemed to weigh heavy, as if the future lay between her numb and shaking fingers. In her mind she saw the two brothers, shredding the trees, spilling blood. And she saw Sesshoumaru, attempting, in vain, to both stop and save his brother, run mad with the power in his veins.

She shook her head to clear it of the vile thoughts within. She could not think of them. Her world was the rosary in her hands and the earth beneath her feet. The leaves whipped by her face, tangled in her hair. Above her the moon had risen and the last of the sun's rays disappeared beneath the darkened tree line.

"Priestess!"

Run. Go. Find her.

She had to be here. She had to.

Where was she? Where?

"Priestess!"

She had no idea where she was going, just running, running, running. Running until something stopped her, until, until-

Ahead, through the moonlight and green shadows the descending night parted and crimson and cream revealed itself, wrapped around the dark beauty of a holy woman. Her porcelain features were drawn with apprehension and fear. She looked as if she had been running, too, chased by the ghosts of what had been, and the future of what could be.

She looked hallow, like a phantom. Where she had always seemed ethereal and otherworldly to Kagome, now she was distant and weak, as if part of her had been stolen away, was not entirely there. She seemed to fade and glimmer beneath the moonlight. And like a whisper on the wind she flickered, waiting to be swept away.

When Kagome's green eyes met the fathomless depths of the priestess, the body with a partial soul and the heartache of what was gone, the world seemed to slow to a crawl as truth filtered in between.

"What is it?" the woman demanded breathlessly, a rising note of terror hitching in her cadence.

At Kagome's chest the Bell hummed, changed and shaped the priestess' words and the perception within her mind. Right then she was endlessly grateful to the Mage and what he had given her. For surely, without the bauble around her neck, she would have lost the chance to ask for the help she so desperately needed.

"It's Inuyasha," she gasped out, holding up the Buddhist beads, "the rosary he wore is broken. The spells are gone. Sesshoumaru sent us. We don't have much time. Can you- can you help? Can you do something?"

Her feet carried her to the woman and they almost collided with one another, propelled together by a common need, by a thread of destiny. Kagome grabbed the woman's arm and began pulling her over the land and back to the temple. The priestess stumbled over her long red skirts, but the Protector held fast and hauled her over the land.

"Can you make another subjugation spell? Can you use this?"

The rosary was shoved into slim, shaking hands, and dark eyes stared down at the simple thing.

"Yes," the quiet voice was almost lost into the forest. "Yes," she repeated, clutching the beads to her chest, "I can help you."

"How soon? How long?"

"Before the midnight hour." They broke back into the clearing and Kagome released the priestess who slowed her haste to the steps of her temple to glance down at the ailing Aeron. She looked over her shoulder and into Kagome's face. "There is water within the shrine. Give some to your companion. He will need his strength for your return journey."

And then she disappeared into the darkness of her home and left Kagome in the glade with a broken mage, taking the fate of man between her fingers and into dark.

* * *

Night had fallen on this side of the earth. The shadows stretched long and deep, but despite the darkness within they were a vague comfort to a man who had been gone from his homeland for twenty odd years.

It was a comfort that retreated swiftly though, almost as soon as Suzu's magic stopped swirling and she collapsed to the ground.

She fell unconscious this time.

And worse yet, they were not to their destination. Not even close.

Sota blinked up at the gently swaying bamboo above him. Through the leaves and shoots he could see the glow of the moon, smiling gently down upon them. He sighed, deeply troubled, fearful even.

Since first he had caught word of the warlord and the young woman at his side, he had been worried. He had refrained from seeking them out at the monastery. In truth, all that surrounded the great Warlord of the West, his sword, and whoever had the unfortunate pleasure of being the Protector, reminded him too much of all that he had lost and had yet to lose. Death was in their fate.

He had seen it again and again.

His father's death. His mother's death. The deaths of his watchers, the holy men within the monastery… the Mage.

He closed his eyes against the memory, the knowledge from the past, still fresh and new and heartbreakingly raw.

Yes, he understood almost too well that death was expected. He knew what it was like to plan a life around death. He was, after all, the son of a warrior. But after so many years, after all the stories, after all the battles, he should have known _better_. But then, he was very much like his father in that respect.

He had learned the unfortunate ramifications of the old world. He had seen the results of mastering artwork in the form of steel. Sota had vehemently resisted killing, had resisted until the time came to defend his own life.

And after that, each life had been just another bloody tick mark that haunted him by night. Sota was, admittedly, incredibly innocent for a man who had known and lived through the darkness and treachery of man and beast It had been naïve of him to assume that by cloistering himself within a darkened forge he would be able to escape the clutches of fate, the deaths that awaited him.

Silly, foolish, naïve.

He frowned up at the night sky and shook his head against the memories.

Against his back, his shield weighed heavy, a reminder of how far he had come and how far he had fallen. He had blood on his hands, something so easily forgotten when the fires of the forges blazed bright and high. Without them he was bare to the world, his sins laid out for his own eyes, the most judgmental of all.

His black gaze fell back to earth and to the woman curled in the gently swaying grass. Above him, the stars began to peak out from the velvety skyline, twinkling alongside the moon.

He was worried. Worried for the three who had ascended the mountain, worried for the five they had become.

He was worried for Kagome, mostly. All of them surely, but for the dark haired woman with green fire he thought the most of, hoped the best for.

His worry and his duty to her, the Protector of the Sword, the Shikon no Tama, was enough to pull Sota off the cold and silent mountain and make him kill again. Because while the son of the Forger wished he could live out the rest of his days next to the gentle fires and steels, he knew he could not. Because there was honor in killing- in killing those who deserved death and all that came after- and Sota had learned honor from the best, from the worst.

The son of a warrior had learned duty, honor, and death from a samurai fallen, a dead Forger, a fellow Protector of a girl long since lost.

So he would bloody his hands again and pray to the god he knew did not exist, that he and Suzu could stave off the disaster looming overhead. Futile supplications tumbled inside his head, heavy and unstoppable. And as each fearful supplication piled high, stacked upon the next, he felt his worry shift and change into real and true fear.

Fear for the woman at his feet, worn and weary. Fear for the other dark haired creature, the one with the world on her shoulders. Fear for Suzu's mage, the man she so quietly cared for. Fear for a warlord and his brother, and all the destruction they could wreak.

He readjusted his weapons and the leather straps across his chest and back, holding the shield to him. He shifted his long, dark cloak from his front, freeing his arms. And then he knelt and gathered the woman into his arms, cradling her between the fingers that had forged the blades that stained his hands with blood, and started off into the night, a lonely shape amidst the trees.

* * *

Kagome hauled Aeron upwards and pushed a wooden cup to his lips, forcing him to drink. He coughed and swallowed and gasped as she took it away. His dark eyes remained closed, but she knew he was awake and aware enough to hear her.

"Are you ok?" she asked softly, leaning down near his ear.

"Grand," he announced weakly, holding a hand to his head.

"Will you be able to get us back?"

"Will she be able to fix our problem?" he asked, tight and curt, all business.

Kagome looked toward the shrine, now illuminated with soft lantern light. "I hope so."

Aeron nodded once and eased himself out of her arms and back down onto the soft earth. "I'm fine. Just let me rest. Let me rest my eyes…"

He passed a large hand over his face and fell into quiet, his energy surging strangely in the air surrounding him. Anxious, Kagome hovered over him for several long, quiet moments before deciding that he was all right and she was safe to move away without fear that he would up and die on her.

Exhaustion was beginning to pull her under its spell. Her muscles and bones ached and hurt, but she was almost acclimated to the constant pain. Her worry had settled into the pits of her stomach, a strident, ardent nausea that refused to quell. Even with the priestess' assured declaration that she could make another subjugation rosary had not unclenched the panic that gripped so surely.

Kagome ran bloodstained fingers over her face, her fingertips touching across the places that Inuyasha had torn and bloodied. Curious fingers traced a path down her throat and over her shoulder, a shudder of pain following the trail.

She was lucky she had lived. Lucky she had the foresight to stumble back and try to run. Lucky that Inuyasha had not meant to kill her with that first swipe.

Lucky, lucky.

Really? Kagome wanted to ask the darkened, velvety night. Lucky?

It didn't feel much like luck.

Moving slowly, she settled down on the rickety steps of the tiny hut. She drew her knees in close, attempting to ward of a chill that had nothing to do with the warm summer's night and everything to do with the impossible future ahead. Kagome watched Aeron, sprawled in the grass; one leg propped up, one hand resting on his chest. His eyes had opened again, and he was staring at the stars above. The wind swept through the forest, whispered sweetly of dark things and riffled his hair. He remained prone, a pained look of concentration twisting the part of his face she could see.

She looked away and tried, unsuccessfully, to dispel some of the darkened fear and anger rooted in her mind. In her hand the Shikon Jewel hummed pleasantly and Kagome felt, at that moment, that it deserved a thorough cursing. She refrained, even though she wanted nothing more than to scream and shout and throw it into an ocean and watch it drown.

That would not do, though. Sesshoumaru would be quite testy if she lost the world's most precious weapon. Inuyasha might not be happy with her either, nor Aeron. Nor Suzu.

It was probably best to save her ire for a more prudent and appropriate time. Weary, she closed her hand over the tiny object and dropped it back to the step.

Jesus. She didn't even know what the jewel could be used for. And here she was, in the midst of some epic quest to reclaim it. Here she was, perched on a step in the middle of Japan, wondering how in the hell a person became the Shikon no Tama without realizing it.

A dull ache, different than the pain through her body, settled in her chest. She felt hallowed out, hopeless and small.

All this, she murmured into her mind, thinking of injuries and blood, her companions, all this for a tiny jewel. She had forever altered the lives of those around her because she was something great and powerful. Great and powerful and weak. Too weak to change anything, too weak and ineffectual to save a friend.

Kagome was the jewel… but she was unable to stop fate, to change what was to be.

Or perhaps, she mused, closing her eyes against the memory of a crimson gaze, laced with rage, she _had_ changed destiny. Had inadvertently caused pain and suffering.

Her friends would gladly die to save her; they had shown her again and again. Die for her because she was a mythic thing. And Kagome would put them in danger over and over, regardless of predestination.

But that was the way it was supposed to be, wasn't it? She needed them and they needed her and they were so caught up and intertwined that it didn't matter who brought the enemies anymore. Because either way they would face death and they would be wounded and broken and hurt.

"Stupid," she spat out suddenly, a wretched sour taste filling her mouth and coloring her words, "wasteful."

Her hand clenched around the jewel, the tiny fragment of unstoppable power. The night fell a little quieter under her wavering strength and staggering belief. She had told herself, time and again that they could do this. That they would survive, that it couldn't possibly be in fate's design to kill them. Not after all they had been through.

But sitting on a step in the middle of Japan, waiting to see if they could save one friend from himself, Kagome was beginning to doubt her own reassuring words.

She had made room in the ever-upbeat mantra for her own death. In fact, a small part of her had expected to die. If not yet, someday, because of an enemy, because of her own foolishness, because of Fate. But the others had always seemed so much stronger and much, much more capable of living and surviving.

She had assumed she would live or die and either way, eventually, they would carry on without her. Because she was Kagome, the girl from the museum.

But it wasn't like that anymore. With fate or without, it wasn't like that.

All she needed was a brief moment where one of the others threw themselves into oncoming death, or inadvertently reminded her of what she had risen from. Or, she thought hazily, it only took a warlord, one who had been so distant and removed and utterly untouchable, and ancient and tired and weary and-

It only took Sesshoumaru, damn him, to show her that fate was a twisted, twining thing, and that there was nothing she could do, nothing at all, but sit on a rickety step and pray that they would live.

Because, she realized slowly, who knew what fate wanted? Were they following destiny now? Had they deviated from the plan? Was Inuyasha meant to die on this night? Was Sesshoumaru fated to kill him? Would Suzu return to the man who loved her, was she ever meant to leave?

And Sesshoumaru- powerful, strong, steady Sesshoumaru. Was he meant to change because of Kagome? Was he supposed to pause in the midst of battle to stare her down, to soften his edges, to pledge more than his life to keep her safe?

Were they meant to give up everything to steal a few moments of selfish want?

Did it even matter? Did she even care?

No, she didn't think she did. She was selfish and human and flawed and in moments where they were the only two in the world she didn't care whether or not she interfered with fate. She was quite sure in fact, that she would damn them all if it meant she could weave her way behind his eyes and through his soul and into his mind.

Because she was selfish and so was he.

Disturbed, afraid of the place those thoughts left off, Kagome stood and made her way into the shrine. She weaved through the darkest room and hovered at the edge of the chamber, hesitant.

The candles and lanterns were dimmer here, throwing but little light on the figure kneeling in the middle of the floor. Between the priestess' fingers the rosary glowed an ethereal pearl. The woman's normally porcelain skin was sallow, and purple lines of fatigue etched trails beneath closed eyes. Her edges seemed fuzzy, as if she were fashioned from a dream. She raised her face when Kagome stepped beneath the arching doorway, stared down the woman with the green eyes.

"You have become stronger," the holy woman murmured absently, letting her gaze trace from Kagome's face to the Bell and Vajra at her chest down to the hand where the tiny jewel still rested. In her words there was a dull and echoless hallow, as if she were not entirely there.

Kagome looked to the rosary were an echo of the holy woman's voice seemed to resonate, where a spark of life twinkled between wooden beads. Something pricked along the back of Kagome's head, dragged shivers down her spine.

"I have," the Protector answered back, equally distant.

The priestess offered a tiny smile before looking back down to her working hands. "The rosary was still strong when I knew him, all those years ago. He mentioned to me once, that the day would come when the magic would fade. He worried, even then, that he would have no way to stop himself, no one to turn to." She laughed gently, "But he was wrong. It is hard not to love him, do you not think?"

Obscured in the shadows, Kagome's voice drifted out, soft and gentle. "It is."

"He has you now. And his brother. And your companions. He feared he would have no one. That no one would understand him, the filthy half breed."

"I don't think his breeding has much to do with whether or not people like him." Kagome replied softly.

"You would be surprised, Protector, how very much it mattered in the time of war and demons. It mattered greatly. And he was in constant danger. He still is."

The priestess' eyes, though they always held a tired, grieving color, a sustained emotion of pain, turned darker still. Sorrow seemed as much of her as skin and blood and had Kagome not known she was a real woman, she might have assumed she was made of tears and regrets, a shadow of a hope, long since lost.

"I have never forgiven myself for what I did to him."

"But you didn't-"

Her dark eyes snapped upward to meet Kagome's own. Her face shone strangely above the magic from her fingers. White light danced in her dark gaze, threw the shadows off and behind her like black wings made of night.

"When you have betrayed the man you love to his worst enemies, helped them to kill him, when you have remained but a shell of your former self, a constant reminder of what he has lost, we shall see if you do not feel guilty for what you have done." She held Kagome's gaze for a long, silent moment before her face softened and she offered a small apology, "But I hope you never know such betrayal, Protector, it is too much to live with."

Kagome leaned against the doorway, watching the woman carefully. Over the sounds of the night and the power rushing into the rosary, she said, with measured words, " You were in the forest. Far from your shrine. I had thought you were bound to this place. As a punishment."

The priestess laughed quietly. "Self inflicted punishment. When Inuyasha's enemies were killed, and I was the only threat left to him, Sesshoumaru offered me one of two alternatives. Death or exile. I chose this. Perhaps death would have ended agony, would have returned me to my soul. It matters not now.

Through my own choices and the sorcery of my enemies I was trapped within my shrine. I had not the power to go much farther than this glade. Onigumo's allies were strong. The magic that bound my soul, that originally stole part of me away stayed. It clung to me and I could not be rid of it. I chose to stay because of it. I was selfish; I did not want to die. But I did not want to harm the man I loved. Not again. Magic and sorcery fades. Like the summer into fall into the depth of winter. Centuries later the sorcery that stole my spirit began to wane, and I began to wander."

"You were freed?"

"No. Not freed. I will never be free. Not until I die and reclaim my spirit, lost to the underworld. Then," she said, her voice nothing but a whisper of darkness, a slice of the deepening night, "then I will be free."

A realization dawned swiftly and painfully. The fear that had hit Kagome when the rosary fell apart was momentarily forgotten as a new dread swept through her limbs and left her swaying against the doorway.

"You are dying."

The priestess frowned, as if in concentration. "Dying? Yes, I suppose that I am."

Kagome gasped and stepped forward, her thoughts immediately flying to the man they were trying to save. "Oh, Inuyasha," she whispered.

"Inuyasha will be relived, I think, to know I will have finally passed on. I know my memory plagues him. After all, his torments me."

Kagome choked on the words that could offer no comfort to the woman lost. She sagged against the doorway and sank under the unbelievable desperation gnawing a way through her insides. What could she say? What could be said that the two lovers had not already thought and felt?

She wanted to proclaim that it was unfair, that it was wrong and that the priestess should fight and live. But that was not the way it would be, and it was silly and naïve of her to declare something to a woman who had walked the earth for centuries lamenting the evil of the world. So Kagome stayed in the shadows, and languished silently to her clamoring soul.

"He deserves to live," the holy woman was saying, "and if this all that I can give him before I pass on and away, then I can afford the sacrifice of my life."

Her eyes closed then, and the light around her fingers died. The room plunged into darkness as a quiet wind swept in through the open doors and windows, snuffing out the wavering flames within their tapers. The woman moved with tired sluggishness, slowly rising to her feet.

When she stumbled over the long, crimson robes swathed around her legs Kagome caught her arm and helped her upright.

"You must hurry, Protector," she murmured weakly. "You must save him. If anyone can it is you. You and your other companions." They fell through the inner sanctum, and back down the steps. "He is fading. He will die. You must go. Hurry! Quick!"

The rosary was thrust back into her hands and delicate fingers were pushing her toward Aeron, unsteadily standing. Kagome tripped over her own feet and fell into Aeron's outstretched and shaking arms.

"Go," the priestess demanded, "go!"

Aeron's fingertips were already at Kagome's temples, his power already threading through her mind. Around them wisps of blue sorcery twined, and the wind moved once more, called to order by Aeron's mastery.

"Thank you," Kagome whispered, though her voice was immediately stolen by the sorcery.

The priestess merely smiled, "Tell him I am sorry."

Blue began to fade to black as numbness settled over a tired head. "You can tell him yourself, one day. But until then I will let him know what you mean. I will tell him you love him still."

And then the sorcerer and the woman were gone, erased and moved by the spell, fluttering across the land.

It was not until they had disappeared and taken the life saving rosary with them that the woman collapsed to the ground, breathing erratically, a searing pain ripping her in two. She gasped as she rolled onto her back, almost unable to breathe. Her slim hands moved to her chest, touched against the place her heart rested beneath cloth and skin- and came away tinged with crimson. She grimaced and clenched her teeth against excruciating agony.

She had prepared to fade away painlessly, effortlessly. She had hoped to slip into the mists of the after, to simply end. She had thought there would be time. Time to wander, time to repent, time to wish again and again, that things had turned out different than they were. But that was not to be. And there was no one else she would rather suffer for than the man she had loved, so long ago, beneath the summer suns and winter moons.

It seemed only fitting that the last little part of her should go toward the thing that would save him. It felt right; it felt like redemption, underneath all the agony.

Her heart _bled_.

It was weeping heartache, pulling her underneath.

She stared upwards at the stars, her writhing pain slowly diminishing into empty oblivion. She felt her edges fading, like mist dissipating as the sun rose.

She watched the stars as the last of her life force drifted away on the wind, curled high and stretched across the land to embed itself within a strand of wooden beads.

For even in death, after a half-life of wandering, she would be with her beloved.

A smile crept onto her lips, and though she was unaware of it, so far gone, soul split and shredded because of the sorcery she had used, she felt herself descend into the memory of lazy kisses, gentle caresses, and sunshine, and bare feet, and days where he whispered his love into her ear and they hid from the world outside her door.

And just then she was home again and finally at peace.

* * *

The magic stopped so abruptly that Kagome was thrown to the forest floor and the air was knocked clean out of her abused lungs. Aeron had passed out from the strain, slumped to the forest floor so neatly she wondered if he was sleeping. As she turned to run toward the distant place where Sesshoumaru's magic thundered, she saw the blood weeping from his nose and between his eyes.

"Oh, shit," she breathed out roughly, her dilemma immediate and gut wrenching.

Aeron groaned and raised a hand at her, waving her away. "Go, go, I'll be fine. Go, Kagome."

She ran. Ran headlong into the fray of sorcery ripping up the forest floor.

Inuyasha was much stronger without the magic that controlled his soul. And Sesshoumaru was straining to hold him back without killing him, without losing command of his own tenuous grip on the sorcery within his blood.

Through the night she saw a blinding flash of white snake down into the earth to tunnel deep and erupt through the bark of trees, exploding the vegetation with a furious crack of power. Sesshoumaru had already sensed her. She could not see him, but he raised his hand and with it came his magic, lifting the broken fragments of earth, rock, and tree from her path, stopping sharp edges from killing her.

A snarl and a hiss of claws near her ear.

She stumbled, fell and rolled over onto her back in time to see the warlord grab his brother and stop the killing strike. Sesshoumaru gripped Inuyasha's arms within his golden glowing hands. Power danced, fricative and dangerous between the two men.

Kagome hauled herself to her feet, struggled to untangle the rosary from her shaking fingers. She stretched it wide and lunged forward to slip it over Inuyasha's neck and thrashing head. He struggled, kicked out at her and caught her in the ribs.

She fell backwards and connected with a tree. Something in her arm and shoulder cracked and went numb. Through the curtain of black hair over her wild eyes, she saw Sesshoumaru wrestle the other man to the forest floor.

Fighting the nausea that came with the overwhelming pain within her arm, she rose again and sprinted the distance between she and the flailing brothers. Her uninjured hand snagged the rosary and looped it around and over the younger man's head. She ignored the gnashing teeth, inches from her own face.

The first loop and her vision was swimming with white.

The second loop and gold joined in the brilliance beneath her face.

The third loop and the rosary burned in her hands, so hot she had to snatch her fingers away.

She scrambled back, biting off a cry of pain as she moved her shoulder and arm, used her hands to leverage away from the danger before her. In the distance a flare of magic ripped at the air, warned her of two new presences as they closed in.

The light before her faded and Kagome was left to stare at a warlord, kneeling tiredly in the dirt, staring down at his prone brother, dark haired and placid once more.

Inuyasha stirred slightly, and she heard a muffled expletive, which, really, was not anything unexpected, after all, it was not everyday one's brother nearly killed one.

She could hear him breathing between the harsh words falling off his tongue. A steady thump in her ears reminded her that someone near was alive, their heart beating hard and fast. It took her a moment of trickling relief and sapped strength to realize it was her own heartbeat, and the waning adrenaline sucked out of her body.

She looked up from Inuyasha's dark form, amazed, relieved, still shaking from fear and pain. Sesshoumaru was carefully examining his brother, hand still glowing a faint golden-white. The minutes dragged on, harsh and silent except for the quick footsteps that approached, the only sign they had before Sota appeared next to them, leading a tired and bedraggled Suzu, his arm supporting the near unconscious Aeron.

Kagome stared at the other three, lost in a shocked silence.

"Holy Christ," Aeron wheezed, finding it within him to open an eye.

Everyone's gazes slowly made their way to him, varying looks of incredulous stupefaction passing across each of their tired features.

That, Kagome decided unevenly, about summed it up.

Sesshoumaru was reaching down to haul the unconscious Inuyasha to his feet, only to stumble against the strain in his muscles and weakness from sorcery. Around him, his magic still strained and moved, charging the air with epic force. Kagome sagged into the earth, and slowly unclenched her hand, grimacing as her bones protested the movement. She glanced down at her hand where the jewel lay and saw blood drip from the cuts where her fingernails had bit into skin, where a death grip had kept the jewel safe from harm.

"Take them," Sesshoumaru was saying, gesturing clumsily to his brother.

The warrior was still hunched over on the ground, hands holding him upright above the dirt. Kagome's gaze snapped up to the man, staring steadily at the earth between his fingers. His brow was drawn low, his face obscured by the shadows and the dark thing welling from within him. He was in the eaves of the night, hard and hungry. He was tenuous, radiating something not unlike the wild power Inuyasha had while uncaged.

The nameless sword strapped to his waist echoed the same power. Like a wicked little laugh, the power bounced over the air and through the powerful man, struggling against his own great power.

Sota was moving, hoisting Aeron into Suzu's tired arms. He strode forward and pulled Inuyasha up and off the ground. As he knelt he looked up through the dark hair over his eyes and met Kagome's wide, panicked gaze.

He reached for her and offered her a hand. She grimaced as she tried to move and shook her head as the pain kept her grounded. Sota wrapped fingers around her uninjured limb, precariously balancing Inuyasha in his other arm. He started to pull her upward, only for her to cry out against the searing hurt in her upper body.

As quickly and as gently as he could, he lowered her back to the earthen floor. Kagome panted through the agony and held her free hand to her shoulder.

"Take him first," she forced through gritted teeth. "You can come back for me."

He nodded sharply and she looked up into his face.

Get up, his eyes said. Go.

He rose unsteadily, hoisting Inuyasha over a shoulder. Under his cloaks and the shield strapped to his back he buckled, wavered, and then ran through the forest and into the safety in the distance.

"Kagome," Aeron was saying, a warning in his voice, "Kagome, come on."

Suzu was urging him forward, casting frightful glances back at the woman kneeling on the ground.

"Kagome_-!"_

She offered him a small, reassuring smile, one that was more a grimace of pain than anything else. "Sota's coming back. I'll be all right. I'm ok. It's ok."

Aeron struggled and stumbled against Suzu's insistent hands, staring back at Kagome as the trees closed in. Kagome watched them retreat, unable to move. She was so _tired_.

"Kagome."

For the first time since they had returned, she looked the warrior in the eye, and on top of all the other tumultuous emotions rocketing around inside her heart and head she felt the pang of memory sting across her skin.

Her hazy eyes widened as she felt his sorcery crawl over her skin. It was spiked and wild, ruthless. He was not in control, had finally, after all the time and practice and trust and change, lost his grip on the weapon and sorcery within. He gritted his teeth in an attempt to command whatever volatile powers slipped within.

"Kagome, go."

She stared into his golden eyes, too tired to move, too selfish to care about his own idiotic selflessness.

"Go," he rumbled dangerously, shaking his head as his claws flexed against the ground.

Kagome sat still and silent, as if she had not heard his words.

"Go, now. I cannot control it. You will be hurt. I will hurt you."

"I can't run anymore," she said so tiredly and wearily that for a moment she wondered whose voice she was hearing. "I am so tired of running."

He stared at her and his magic began to shift and change, gather and condense in the air around him. She saw something new in his eyes, something like real fear.

"I can't, Sesshoumaru," a plea, a drained, tired declaration. "I_can't_ run anymore. I can't." She said this slowly, exhaustion weighing down each word.

He shook his head again, once, but he had not the breath for speech. In the strained silence he begged her to move. It was a futile demand; she couldn't have stood even if she had wanted to.

The earth beneath his hands shifted strangely, like a whirlpool in the midst of the ocean. His golden eyes were dark, grey with unfamiliar light. The bright gaze slid closed, and she could see him fighting to hold back the power that crushed against his defenses, a tidal wave of uncontrollable necromancy. He shuddered convulsively, shoulders riding high as he folded into himself, as if to contain the power within his stubborn weapon, his strong blood.

Had she the strength to be afraid or frightened she would have been at that moment, for never had she seen the great warlord as anything but forceful and powerful, capable and strong. After all they had endured in the previous days, that he should now lose control- seemed a cosmic joke to a wasted woman, sitting in pain beneath the darkened night.

"Run," he said through the abrasive voice that was not his own, "run."

"I can't," she said simply. And even quieter, whispered, "I trust you."

His head dropped to the forest floor, pressing into the cool earth beneath. Tendrils of light wafted into the night air as they threaded outwards from his fingertips. In a sudden explosion of blinding light he disappeared within white necromancy as thick as smoke. His form was shadowed and terrible. Like the beast that made his blood, a dark shape fluttered through the white light and dark night. A bright column of magic reached up high over the trees. In its twisting form she saw the outline of some great creature thrashing to break free from his form.

Behind her the brush crashed and cracked as Sota appeared, slowing to a stop as his eyes landed on the maelstrom of violent mastery.

Kagome inhaled magic into her lungs. Burning like caustic fire it threaded through her senses and tingled along her spine. A sound waned prolonged, but it was so far outside her hearing she could not catch hold of the noise.

To the darkened night it might have been a howl of fury and freedom.

The white fury that was his power unleashed snarled and tore, but inches from her body. She stared up into the chaos, eyes wide and reflecting the darkened twisting shadows within, like demons let from the pits of hell.

Sota started forward, his feet snapping the twigs and branches littered over the ground. Kagome twisted and threw out her hand to halt him.

."Stop! Don't!"

Sota's face twisted darkly and he prepared to move anyway.

"Sota, wait! Wait, please!"

The man halted then, caught in indecision and true fear. He was not frightened for his own life. He was too brave and valiant and quietly gallant to dread the great magic of the warlord. He panicked for her, already caught in the midst of the great spell.

Around her folded legs the white power had already begun to thread and coil. Bleached light twined up her extended arm, tickled the sensitive pads of her fingers. Up over her throat the sensation rolled, like a lover's kiss. Paradoxically cool and soft and gentle, the sorcery rose over her face and unfurled into her mass of hair, entwining ivory and ebony into a strange halo of night and day. The light was so bright beneath her eyes she had to close them and turn her face away from Sesshoumaru's raging power.

Possessive need, selfish want. Desire, authority, merciful protection.

She breathed in the white-gold feeling and expelled empty loss.

Warmth settled like a blanket about her shoulders and burrowed into her chest.

And then the land erupted, just as it had during those first unruly, volatile days. Just as it had the second time she had seen him fight an enemy. Just as it had countless times before, when he was in control.

But this time he was not. This time he was lost to his own power.

Kagome huddled into herself, unable to raise her arms to shield her head from the buckling land and exploding earth. The power twined around her body and dragged her toward the middle of the inferno. Through the swarming magic and twisted sorcery she felt herself move, slide, and stop. Above her the great and powerful warlord loomed, but he was hidden between the snowy white sorcery and the buckling earth. Fragments of rock and brush rocketed up into the sky. She could feel the land beneath her shift and change and then disappear, his sorcery breaking the world in two.

And over the screech and crack of the earth, she heard a voice of sand and rock and fiery, angry determination, say her name to the sky, and part the power that brushed too close to her fragile life. And through the darkened earth, upturned and thrown overhead, the sea of stormy white magic, the wind that was churned from inside blood and forged by cold, hard steel, she saw his golden eyes, swallowing her green gaze whole.


	45. The Nameless Sword

_From now until the foreseeable future updates will be sporadic. The Protectors will be finished at or before chapter 60, that's the goal anyway._

* * *

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**Chapter 45**

**The Nameless Sword**

The space was a twisting nexus of awe-inspiring white. Purged of every flaw and color, it radiated purity and the absence of all things dark and twisted. The dance of the power whispered as flames would, and whined like a high wind atop a mountain. It was so bright inside the place that his shadow was but a lost and forgotten memory.

He closed his eyes and felt the power course through his head and heart and hands. It threaded into his chest with the precision of a needle laced with a strand of time.

He could feel the power that he had lost and given up to save his homeland, the country he shed his blood for. It was there, in that plane. The thing he had been searching and striving for over long and endless centuries was just within his grasp.

He could _taste_ completion. He was almost whole. Swimming through his veins the missing piece surged, infusing with his soul, knitting back together what had been torn asunder.

It was a lilt, a caress, a whisper over his skin. A kiss, a stab of steel, a victory and a loss.

It was the edge of a sword, the turn of his mind.

That final key to that final lock was nothing tangible, but power so great rarely was. In his mind's eye colors melted and memory fused. In a span of a moment his entire existence spun out and sharpened to crystal clarity.

And when he opened his eyes he saw the sword jutting up from the bleached and nonexistent ground. It stood strait and proud and true, just like its makers had centuries before. Around the blade the universe burned white and absolved the beyond. The red of the blade's hilt seemed harsher when contrasted to the nothing surrounding, and the darkened glint of its perfect metal could have been a slice of the night that bled into the ends of his reality.

The hilt and the steel beneath it were like blood and darkness, miserable sins.

He stepped forward and the shadows encroached around invisible edges, steadily melting away the dominion within the sword, within the warlord.

Another step. And another. And another.

Until he stood just above it, alone in a sphere of ivory, surrounded by the depths of dark.

He reached for the blade and his fingers touched against the hilt, sure and strong. A victorious smile had begun a languid crawl across his lips, only to falter as his golden eyes looked somewhere beyond the burning sphere encompassing him. His victory splintered. as through the darkness he caught the flash of emerald.

Righteous conquest fled and his moment of dark triumph scattered to the ends of the universe.

When he spoke to the quiet they were not the words he had imagined he would say, during all those centuries he fantasized about the moment he claimed mastery. They were not intonations of power and triumph. They claimed no victor, lorded no dominion.

Because even in his greatest success he was bound and unable to escape his darkest downfall.

"You will not hurt her."

Devoid of an echo, his voice faded into the nothing.

The air beneath the sword vibrated and sent a tingle through his skin.

_Of course not_, the blade seemed to hum. _After all, _you_ would not_.

_And we are one in the same. _

And it was true.

So the Warlord of the Western Lands wrapped his hands around the sword he had wrested from the clutches of a devil, the weapon he had lost and reclaimed, the thing that had become suddenly so infinitesimal in comparison to a human-

And claimed it as his own, embraced the darkness racing down to thread a man between his sins.

Stitched back together, melded and folded and no longer broken or weak, Sesshoumaru tightened his iron grip on the weapon within his hand. He stepped forward, into the abyss, and the hand that stretched before him sliced away the inky darkness. His fingers searched, grasped, and found the wayward woman, lost in the eruption of his soul.

* * *

Inuyasha rested against a tree as his shallow breath brought him the night air. The brother of the warlord stirred, a frown marring his features as he dragged himself up and out of dark reverie. Through his dull, aching head he heard the sigh of the breeze through the forest and felt the low-grade static and distant snap of power. 

Bleary eyes cracked open and for a few, confused seconds he stared up into the black sky. The stars were bright overhead, and next to his ear the wind sighed sweet and low.

It was the ripping of earth that brought him back to the ground, the pulsing necromancy that shattered the serene sounds of the night and brought the explosions to his ear. His eyes fell back to the earth and landed on the indistinct shadow of a lanky man and a tiny woman, huddled together, staring fearfully into the darkened tree line. Indecision clouded their judgment, and for fear of the great power in the distance, they stood still and helpless along the top of a small ridge.

Inuyasha squinted his eyes and willed his mind to focus. His head could not add together the noises creaking through the forest, nor the uncontrollable force sweeping over the night. He could feel a prickled warning run up his spine as a sense of foreboding settled upon his shoulders.

Memory sprung and welled and in the dizzy aftermath, he was left to reel. He scrambled forward and fell, his limbs so weak he could barely support his own weight as he attempted to lift himself off the ground. Gritting his teeth against lax muscles and horrible, numbing pain, he rose to his feet. It felt like the greatest undertaking in all his life to rise from the earthen floor and right himself vertical. He stumbled past the two mages, hovering fretfully on the edge of a hill overlooking a great, white brilliance dancing into the night.

He did not even pause to catch a glimpse of the terrible and beautiful wonder as he shoved past the mages and nearly knocked Aeron off his feet.

"Wait, Inuyasha!" the man called, tripping down after him.

He ignored the man's cry and hobbled down the incline, a hand held to his side as he vaulted over fallen logs and fought the churning ground. He broke through a thickened patch of trees not far from where his unconsciousness had left him, and saw Sota's form outlined against the sorcery.

The blacksmith stood in awe, scant feet away from the onslaught of power. But his wonderment was already dissipating into the wind, his thoughts collecting to will his limbs and magic to act.

Sota stepped toward the white wall of fire as one hand fumbled uselessly for a weapon within his cloak. The column of white reared. It seemed to possess a mind of its own, and at that moment, all its attention was focused on the blacksmith, scrabbling for a defense against power he could not fight.

Inuyasha snarled and threw himself forward to grab the man's shoulder and pull him away from the dangerous, twining sorcery. Like snakes, tendrils of power formed and rose, and the two men stumbled backward, tripping over one another as they wrested free from the burning agony of a warlord.

The Forger's son grasped the sword at his side, a vain attempt to do something in a hopelessly helpless moment. Inuyasha grabbed the leather strap across the man's chest, the binding holding his shield to his back, and jerked harshly.

"Don't," he commanded again. "There is nothing you can do."

"But, Kagome-"

Inuyasha glared at his brother's blinding sorcery, mouth set in a grim line, his eyes glittering dangerously. When he did not immediately respond to Sota, the man moved forward once more, only to feel the strong tug of a hand on his shoulder.

"I said_ don't_."

Sota fixed Inuyasha's profile with a hard, inscrutable stare. Illuminated by the strange and deadly splendor the two men warred a silent battle, before Sota nodded curtly and eased back, his hand falling away from his sword.

Their eyes rooted on the twisting mass before them, steadily growing in power and intensity. Through the curtain of resplendence two shadows moved, one great and terrifying, like a wolf, a beast, and the other small and faint, flickering against the power as if at any moment it would cease to exist.

There was a rustle of movement at Inuyasha's side, and Aeron and Suzu appeared, leaning on one another for support. The tall mage sagged visibly as he laid eyes upon the shadows within the magic, and a palpable despair drained the energy from his body.

"I told you to get her," Aeron snapped in a dark undertone, the threat in his voice leveled at the blacksmith standing on Inuyasha's other side.

Sota did not remove his eyes from the blaze, nor did he expend the energy to address the man threatening to erupt azure fury. But for all his calm serenity, Inuyasha caught a glimpse of a muscle twitch in Sota's jaw and recognized the horrible, twisting worry and guilt reflecting in his dark eyes.

Aeron's hands were rising in a frantic attempt to draw on the sorcery he had tapped and run dry. Inuyasha's fingers streaked out and batted the mage's hands down.

"Do _not_ interfere," he snarled vehemently.

Aeron glared at him and wrenched his hand free. He swallowed hard, and fixed his desperate gaze onto the rising sorcery threatening to fell the forest and the irreplaceable lives inside.

Breathing was difficult around the fear slicing through his middle. His still healing wounds were not helping him either. Inuyasha felt his knees begin to weaken and his head slide in muzzy circles.

Through the haze he heard Suzu whisper, horrified and enthralled by the beautiful and deadly sight, "What is he doing?"

Into the churning night and the screech of power and combusting wind and straining elements, Inuyasha said, so quietly he wondered if it would remain a secret underneath the noise, "He is fighting for dominion over the sword."

Aeron jolted sharply. But Inuyasha's hand was already on his arm, holding his sorcery at bay.

"Aeron, do not move."

The man twisted and halfheartedly tried to pull his arm from Inuyasha's grasp. With her remaining strength, Suzu clutched his other arm, holding him back from stupid nobility.

Inuyasha tugged the man's arm. "We need to move. Now. This is dangerous." When the others hesitated he snapped. "Move! You aren't of any use if you are dead!"

The companions stumbled back, Inuyasha trailing behind the other three. He watched the brilliance crawl across the ground and burn away the grass beneath the moving silt and sand and rock. Curls of the blaze followed their hasty retreat, snapping and hissing at their heels.

Inuyasha backed away as fast as he could without turning his back on the scene. As frightening as it was to behold, he could not help the feeling of wonderment that enclosed him. In all his years he had never believed they would make it to this day.

The hypothetical day the warlord reclaimed his sword had been the guiding principle, the momentum. It had fueled centuries of fighting and bloodshed.

It was bittersweet and disappointing, he thought; as he stared at a twig engulfed in white flame- far too near his foot for his comfort- how unimportant the sword seemed now.

It was ironic, how five hundred years of waiting had turned Sesshoumaru into a man the warlord would have once despised and killed.

Funny, how they were so close to losing all in a moment when everything should have been gained. And more than it was funny; it was sad and lonely, empty and dark.

Around his neck his rosary weighed heavy, a memory of a life always parallel to his.

"Inuyasha!"

He spun at the sound of his name, ripped from a trance.

Sota, Aeron, and Suzu crawled behind the relative safety of broken trees, a makeshift haven. Inuyasha started after them, climbing up the tall height of a fallen tree. He paused as he mounted it, peering into the brightest parts of the brilliant monster growing and taking over the forest. Teetering on the brink he watched the warlord's power engulf and rise, high and higher still, until it seemed to reach the pinnacle of the sky.

Inuyasha winced as the light pulsed and intensified. He raised a hand to shield his sensitive eyes and squinted as a new, blurry shape began to emerge within the necromancy gone awry.

Sleek and small, forged from fires and made into the finest of blades, the nameless sword winked and shone, brighter than the white-gold power of a warlord. Inside the white wall, the three distinctive shadows converged.

Black on white and white on black. Two voids warred with one another and struggled to dominate. Inuyasha's eyes widened as he watched night and day balance, find peace between, merge together a rift that had been created within the fires of a forge-

And then explode.

The wave of energy knocked him off his feet and he sank to his knees, hugging himself to the tree. The blast streamed across the land like a ripple across a lake. Trees uprooted and splintered as the earth shifted and separated. Hesitantly, Inuyasha lifted his head to stare deep into the forest where the power disappeared, tearing the landscape up as it went.

There was a pause, and he dared to hope they had survived the worst. But then the whole world seemed to sigh and with a force akin to a hurricane wind, the air expelled rushed back toward Sesshoumaru, still hidden within his power.

A tree branch, aloft on the wind knocked Inuyasha off the trunk he perched against. He hit the ground hard. His hands and feet scrabbled for cover and he found it against the same tree had fallen from.

It lay horizontal to the ground, and he wedged himself between the earth and the curved base molded securely in the soft dirt. Around the massive girth of the natural monument the winds tugged and howled. Golden dust drifted off the edges of the moss and vegetation, beckoned into the whirlpool of magic.

He squeezed his eyes shut and willed his erratic breathing to calm. His fingers, devoid of their claws, dug frantically into the ridges of the bark. Underneath him the earth continued to swim and churn, like a quicksand sea.

Inuyasha glanced down one end of the tree, in search of his companions. Wedged between two fallen oaks, Sota was reaching his hand out for Suzu, grabbing her and dragging her into the little den beneath the ancient tree trunks. He extended his hand for Aeron but the mage just shook his head and huddled between the knotted roots of a huge Arbor tree.

Inuyasha watched as Sota shrugged off his shield and hurled it toward Aeron, who caught it clumsily and settled it against his exposed side. Large rocks and shattered, sharpened tree limbs whipped past, some shattering against the shield Aeron hid behind. Assured that the mage was relatively safe, the blacksmith disappeared a moment later, slipping within the confines of the trees.

Any vague relief Inuyasha felt upon seeing the other three uninjured was tempered by the jolt of fear that asserted itself the moment his cover began to move. The wind plucked with effective fingers and the giant natural barrier began to roll. Bracing his arms against the width of the tree, he dug his feet into the ground and pushed with all the strength left in his body. He felt the muscles in his legs rip and tear as he desperately tried to find a foothold to leverage against.

"Oh, shit," he gasped, as the tree continued to move, sucked into the waterless eddy of ancient power. The tree shuddered horribly as it was dragged awkwardly across the land.

The tree trunk slipped across the ground again, gaining another five feet. Each jarring shudder loosened his handholds. A sudden gust of wind propelled the tree and the trunk rolled. He was forced to let go of the tree or suffer being crushed beneath its weight. Crawling on his hands and knees, still seeking cover from the magical elements flying around in the air, the tree pushed him toward the power he was desperately trying to escape from.

Across the forest floor the ivory edges of the sorcery crawled.

He reared back into the tree, stretched his neck and face away from the floating, burning white-hot magic.

"Wait," Inuyasha heard himself murmur, as if to the world in its entirety. "Wait. Wait, wait, _wait_."

His shoes dug uselessly into the soft, moving earth. The bleached power burned deathly, touched at his feet, singed the ends of his trousers. He turned his face away as the extraordinary fire fought the gravitational pull inwards. Little furrows of lames leapt from forest floor to branch, ignited leaves on the wind. The tree he clung to crackled with heat and fire.

He looked toward the tangled mess of ebony and ivory. The stretching, angry limbs of the sword's power had melted inward.

As fear filled as Inuyasha was, he felt a sigh of relief in his soul. Because there was one thing he knew above all else one thing that offset the dread coursing through him.

He knew, _above all things_, that Kagome was safe with Sesshoumaru.

Even if he lost control, even if the world were breaking under the strain from Sesshoumaru's own sorcery and dominion… she would be safe. She had to be.

The warlord would turn the earth over and rip out its seams to ensure her protection.

She was safe. She was well. He would master the sword. They would be all right. They would. They would. They had to be. They would.

There was no more room for almost tragedies and Inuyasha had not the heart to suffer through the loss of more life. He could feel the crippling loss of hope faded. It was almost too much to bear, clinging helplessly to a broken fragment of the forest, watching helpless, as sorcery swallowed their future whole.

"_Wait, hold on, wait_," he chanted over and over again. It couldn't get any worse. Sesshoumaru would gain control. He could do it.

His fingers were slipping, and his muscles, which only hours earlier had been severed and rendered useless, could no longer stand the strain. The flames were engulfing the tree, were hissing against his clothes.

And just then, when he thought he might be engulfed in the power, the magic vanished.

He collapsed to the earth, suddenly cold and vacant without the overwhelming urgency from the wrought sword. Inuyasha felt his lungs constrict as he expelled sharp sorcery and mingled oxygen. He coughed violently and the disruptions of the air swirled golden dust up into his eyes. Blinking rapidly he reached out and felt along the smoldering tree before carefully pushing himself up onto his feet. He leaned back against the tree, feeling weak and sick.

Around them the last vestiges of wayward power drifted off into the pockets of morning, like snow, like mist. A trail of the dying and completed smoky power wafted up high into the trees, an accidental smoke signal.

His eyes followed the burned trail of the forest floor to the center and beginning of the conflagration.

Relief was swift and hope burgeoned beneath. He staggered as his eyes beheld the sight.

A soft, waxen glow had fallen with the gold dust, white mist, and faded ivory. On the floor of the land the same ghosts of the sorcery still twirled, wrapped and twining around two shapes, huddled into a crater in the earth.

Sesshoumaru was bent to one knee, his face and chest pressed into the woman cradled in his arms. Between them, somehow pressed in the scant inches that separated them, was the sword. They were frozen for a moment, before Inuyasha saw the tension leave his brother's frame. With infinite care, the warlord raised his face, and Kagome relaxed her arms and hands, formerly wrapped within Sesshoumaru's protective grasp. In one of her hands, the one not glowing by the faint power of the Shikon Jewel, lay the hilt of the sword. Her fingers were trapped under Sesshoumaru's own, pressed into the crimson sword hilt.

Through the circle within the welded metal, the last of the fragile magic swept inward. With one final, silent breath all the drifting power was gone and back where it belonged, balanced between the Warlord of the West and his Nameless Sword.

Sesshoumaru rose, unfolding his tall height. Kagome slipped out of his lap and wobbled on her feet. Through Inuyasha's sudden and rapidly dimming vision, he saw the two Protectors' eyes meet. And then Kagome was retracting her fingers from the weapon that the warlord had dreamed, wrought, carried, and killed for. With a quiet reverence and an even calmer grace, she inclined her head to the Warlord of the Western Lands.

For the final time on that long, and terrible day, Inuyasha sank to the forest floor and welcomed the unconscious blackening gently, lulling away his thoughts. Just before he closed his eyes to claim sweet and elusive rest, he heard the news on the wind and in the earth next to his ear.

Sesshoumaru was master of the sword.

A smile crawled across the man's face as his fading eyes watched the Warlord raise the woman's chin, and ghost a caress across her face.

And then he let himself fall asleep, because he'd be damned if he hadn't earned it.

* * *

Water washed the rusty reds and browns across cerulean stone. Steam and heat rose and clung to the walls of the room, the slippery floor outside the glass panes. Except for the steady sound of water against tile, the heart beating within her chest, and the uneven intake of air, all was silent. 

Kagome huddled against the wall of the shower, her back to the bright blue tile. Around her, the steam rose high and heavy, like mist off a lake, like the last remnants of Sesshoumaru's sorcery, still clinging to the air in the woods. Her cheek lay against her drawn up knee and one hand wove its way into her hair.

Her fingers weakly navigated the knots and snarls matted underneath dried mud and blood. Hot water was steadily dripping down her dark head and into stinging eyes. Despite the discomfort, she was loath to move from where her back pressed against the cool ceramic wall. Her dark, wet curls plastered to her face, sticky and heavy.

Fingers swept across her brow and came away stained scarlet. She stared at her hands where the blood caked between the creases of her palms.

Kagome's blood. Kagura's blood. Inuyasha's blood.

With sudden fervor, she shoved her hands into the spray of water, allowing the hard downfall to wipe away the proof of hurt and death. When her arms could no longer hold themselves up, she let them drop to her sides, wincing as her muscles protested the movement. Although the pain from her body had been healed away, the aches in her bones refused to leave her peace. Nor would they flee from her heart, weighed down by sharp memory.

She sighed heavily and inhaled the heavy steam. The water was so hot it was almost unbearable. It felt necessary to try and burn away the past few days. If the only way to rid herself from the grime of battle and the anguish of recollection was to boil alive, then so be it.

She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms more securely around herself. Behind the darkness, history stretched and stitched together.

The moment Inuyasha fell and drenched the earth with his blood.

Aeron's face as he looked down upon a dying friend, a man too brave for his own damned good.

Sota, appearing from the thick of the woods, his heart worn upon his sleeve, his courage sweeping him from cold and desolate mountains to the forests of his homeland.

The searing memory of Sesshoumaru's hand across her face, the touch of his magic as it wound around her and drew her in close.

The haunted, darkened look across the priestess' fading visage.

Kagome gnawed on her lip, fighting the high sting in her nose and the sudden need lie down and fall asleep and never, ever wake up.

She leaned her head back against the wall and tried to block out the most fearful of all realities. She tried very hard then, to forget the news that Kagura had given her, just before her death.

But there was no forgetting her words.

Onigumo knew their secret. And time was, as it always had been, running out.

She pressed her hands to her eyes and color exploded in her head.

If only she could forget the priestess' words. If only she still possessed the naiveté to believe that the holy woman had lived.

If only.

Her heart hurt. It literally ached within her chest.

They had lost another.

One more soul. One more.

And Inuyasha, brave, audacious Inuyasha. He had lost her again, his quiet beauty from the shrine.

Kagome turned her face towered the water, willing it to wash away the moisture gathering on her eyes and seeping onto darkened lashes. With shaking fingers she stripped off the soaked, torn, and bloodied shirt clinging to skin and tossed it to the tiled floor. Between furious wipes of tears underneath the hot water on her face, she pulled off the rest of her torn and tattered clothes. She moved slowly, limbs and muscles exhausted and unwilling to cooperate.

Free of the oppressive reminders of battle, Kagome lowered herself to the shower floor. She stared at the azure tiles, traced a fingertip around the mosaic beneath her. Around her, dirt and blood washed free, and she curled into herself, afraid to move, breathe, think.

Overwhelmed, she gave way to numbing emptiness.

She could still feel Sesshoumaru's magic in her lungs, remember the way the darkness encroached and he had left her to claim the sword. The empty nothing clung to the walls of her chest like the sea to the shore. But then he had returned, like always, ripping up the universe in his attempt to find her. Even now, his magic surrounded her, for all she vainly tried to wash it away.

Around her neck the silver chain of the Bell and Vajra hung heavy. Just outside the shower the Shikon Jewel sat on the floor, pristine and small.

And Kagome was somewhere in between trinkets and great power, slowly undoing a warlord from his hidden place in the shadows.

Her bright eyes peeked open and she held the Mage's gift before her eyes. The Bell and the Vajra, the Vajra and the Bell. There was not one without the other.

Though all her worries were great and terrible, though some were more important than others, she found herself a selfish moment of slow and heady insight. Of all the things to care about, in a perfect world it would have been the least important.

But a perfect world it was not, and Kagome had never once expected it to be. It seemed fitting that realization happened in the strangest of places, least of all in a bathroom, in the middle of the night, as she fought exhaustion and grief and fear. But for all that she had experienced in the hours prior to the moment she sank down upon the cool, unmoving floor, Kagome had never felt quite so hallow and forsaken.

Although she had known heartache before, it had never torn at her as steadily as it did now.

Because now she _could_ sympathize with sickening conviction, Sesshoumaru's abhorrence for the weakness others brought him.

Because if Inuyasha could lose his priestess, if the Mage could lose his wife, if Kagome's mother could lose her father, if Aeron could lose his parents and fear the loss of his Suzu… then Kagome could lose everything, too.

If she were not the warlord's undoing then he would be hers.

Kagome wept.

* * *

Dawn was approaching when she found the energy to pick her haggard body up off the floor and forget her tears. She had lost count of the number of hours she had been awake. Her mind was foggy and inattentive. Reality seemed a dream, the days past but nightmares, someone else's memories. 

With soft steps and measured intent, Kagome slipped through the quiet halls and the fading shadows trapped within. She made her way to Inuyasha's room where the door stood ajar and light filtered out to dispel the dark. She paused at the doorway and peered through the tiny crack between the door and the jam.

Inuyasha lay propped against the headboard, his face grey and ashen. Above him, the tall, lean form of the mage stood dark and obtuse against the soft light by the bedside. Aeron was speaking softly, but even from where she stood, Kagome could hear the gentle humor in his voice.

Her eyes drifted away from the two men and toward a third shadow, standing erect and silent by a large windowpane. Sota stared out into the early morning light, face obscured by shadows and his own dark thoughts.

Quietly, Kagome pushed open the door and slipped inside. Aeron's quiet conversation stuttered to a halt as he glanced over his shoulder. His weary face faded into a small smile as he laid eyes on Kagome, hovering in the depth of the door.

She heard Inuyasha's voice, weak with fatigue, ask, "Is it Kagome?"

Aeron nodded. "It is." He cast a meaningful glance at her and she held up her hand, motioning for him to finish speaking to the prone warrior.

The mage watched her for a moment before complying. Kagome skirted the corners of the room and ambled over to Sota's side. Illuminated by the spilt blue and ivory light of the night and moon, he cast a deep trench into the morning, like a void and a door to solemn secrecy.

He was so quiet, even here, away from his forges.

She looked up to him and saw the corner of his lips lift into a gentle smile. Though he did not break his gaze from the early morning, he said, as soft as the moonbeams illuminating his darkened form, "I am glad to see you again."

"Me too," she murmured, still tracing her curious gaze over his profile.

Sota looked down at her. "You are well?"

She scrutinized the lines of his face as he waited for her answer. He was a steady reminder of a dark shadow. Her mind itched when she was around him, as if it were struggling to fit him into a past he didn't belong to. The kindness in his eyes was unparalleled. And as familiar as his presence felt to her, his countenance was not one she had ever known. But still, as always, he was an echo of something distant and out of place.

"Yes," she breathed, almost winded, "I am."

His smile widened and she turned to fully face him. "You came back with Suzu. Thank you. For helping us." She flicked a look back at Inuyasha and Aeron and offered him a knowing grin. "Even if they don't seem particularly gracious, I am."

He ducked his head and it took a moment for her to realize he was laughing. She watched him with a mixture of curiosity and confusion, and unbidden, the words fell from her lips.

"Will you- will you be staying?"

He thought for a moment, eyes drifting to the darkened pockets of the ceiling above. He hesitated only briefly before saying, "Yes."

"I know you," she said abruptly. She closed her mouth swiftly and pressed her lips together. More quietly she said again, "I know you from somewhere, somewhere other than the monastery. Only I can't remember where."

He looked back out into the night and she could almost see the darkness sweep in and wrap him whole, like the cloak he wore across his back. She could see his eyes smiling through the hard lines on his face.

"I know you from somewhere, too."

"Ok," Kagome murmured, feeling hidden doors begin to close him away from her close examination. "I'm glad you'll be staying," she added softly, before stepping back and away from his side, leaving him in the peace he desired and longed for, the serenity he had left behind.

She crossed the room and halted behind Aeron's tall height. Before her, Inuyasha was glaring at the mage, a sour look contorting his face.

"I'm fine," he was snapping, albeit weakly, at the man hovering over him.

"Well, you may think that but you were very nearly sliced to ribbons by shards of glass, lost complete control of your soul, and then blacked out onto the forest floor after all was said and done. Besides, Sesshoumaru told you to rest." At the sound of the warlord's name, Kagome's heart fluttered. "So you probably should because I don't think he's in the mood to be tested."

Inuyasha crossed his arms and espoused an even surlier glare.

"And you'll upset Kagome," Aeron added in a dirty and underhanded move.

The dark anger softened slightly but did not leave. Kagome hid her smile.

Aeron sighed and pointed toward a plate of lemon bars at Inuyasha's bedside. "I'm exhausted, but I scrounged through the deep freezer to find those for you to assuage my own guilt. Just stay in bed and get some sleep."

"You should feel guilty, you bastard. I nearly died trying to save you," Inuyasha groused unhappily.

"Fine. I'm guilty and I'm a horrible mage. Forget that I had the situation handled, and I did not need any of your help. Now will you sleep, you stupid idiotic stubborn ass?"

Inuyasha opened his mouth to reply when his eyes traced past Aeron's face and toward Kagome. She wore a bemused expression of disgusted disbelief. The mage paused and glanced at her.

"What the hell is the matter with the two of you?" she wondered aloud, more amused than upset.

She stepped into toward the bed and halted at Aeron's side. "We've been safe and sound for no more than two hours and you're already back to arguing? You should be resting."

"What about you?" Aeron countered. "Do you know how many times you almost died in the last week?"

Kagome sighed wearily and moved to perch on the edge of the bed. "Too many times to count. I'm fine now," she stated blithely, but in a firm enough tone to suggest that he drop the matter.

She did not need Aeron or anyone else questioning her brave front nor her well being. It was enough, she felt, to have the strength and self-preservation to pick herself up off the shower floor. Questions and concerns would only unhinge her. She deftly avoided their intense gazes as they fastened on her face, choosing, instead, to concern herself with the silken cover of the bed.

She could see Inuyasha frown as his dark eyes narrowed in dubious scrutiny. He said nothing though, and seeped in disquiet and a strange, silent despair. When she chanced a look at him, assured that both men had stopped examining her for weakness and frailty, she caught the guilt that flashed a regretful expression across his worn face.

At her side Aeron dragged his interest away from her and toward the man on the bed, in dire need of rest.

"Anyway," the mage continued on, more softly than before, " you should sleep and stop arguing with me. We can all talk tomorrow."

"Tomorrow," Inuyasha cut in sharply, "might be too late. If Onigumo attacks tonight-"

"If Onigumo attacks tonight then we will take care of it." Sota stated from near the window. "As it is, I doubt he will. He will attack us when we are at a greater disadvantage, not upon Sesshoumaru's own land."

Inuyasha stared hard at the man's back and opened his mouth to retort, but thought better of it and sank back into the pillows behind him.

"Yeah," he sighed wearily, "I guess so."

Aeron reached out and clapped Inuyasha on the shoulder, "Rest. We'll talk when we've slept and recuperated." The mage drew back, but not before leaning forward to give Kagome a swift kiss to the crown of her head, a reassuring and grounding touch, a reminder that he was there.

Aeron drifted to the doorway where he waited patiently while Sota drew away from the window and crossed to the door. He raised his hand in a goodbye, and sent a soft smile toward Kagome before he disappeared out into the corridor, followed a moment later by the lanky mage.

For a long time after the two men left, she remained frozen, eyes unseeing and rooted to an indeterminate spot upon the door. She could feel Inuyasha's gaze upon the back of her head.

"I'm sorry." His voice was raw and scratched.

Kagome closed her eyes and hung her head. Damp curls fell over her shoulder to weep moisture into the back of her shirt.

"It wasn't your fault," she retorted.

"I could have killed you."

Kagome shrugged and turned back to him. "And notice I'm still here, unbothered by the whole thing." His gaze dropped to his hands where his fingers clutched the fabric of the coverlet.

She exhaled heavily, feeling marginally aggravated by his guilt-ridden demeanor. Scooting up the bed to sit by his hip she curled her fingers around his hand and gave it a comforting squeeze.

"I don't care what could have happened," she declared in a soft, firm voice. "What _could_ have happened no longer matters to us. Only what has." His protests died on his tongue, and although his self-condemnation did not leave him, she saw it lift and lessen.

She didn't blame him, and she needed him to know that. And although he was terribly stubborn, they both knew she would hear no more apologies, no more could haves and should haves. It was enough that they were alive. Broken maybe, but alive just the same.

Her gaze drifted to the new rosary hanging around his neck. Although it was weak and diluted, Kagome could feel the vague and ghostly presence of the priestess, embedded within the very grains of the necklace.

"There are so many more important things to worry about," she ended in a whisper more to herself than to him, staring at the memory twined around his neck.

Her brow furrowed as she stole her nerve and met his eye and all the haunting, sorry emotion within it.

"I-" Kagome started, only to be cut off by his sharp, quiet voice.

"She's gone."

Kagome sucked in a harsh breath and she felt his fingers tighten around hers. With his free hand he reached upwards and wrapped the slack of the necklace around a finger.

"She's gone," he stated again, voice startlingly empty.

"Yes," she breathed out harshly.

"I felt her fade away and drift over the land. It was like an exhalation of air, a final breath before death. And the last little bit of her that remains is here," he held the rosary higher, "in this."

He laughed dully. "She might have lived longer if this final act hadn't drained so much of her magic." The weary, ironic smile faded from his face and was replaced by a poignant, bittersweet expression. "But then," he amended gently, "there was not much left of her. She has been a ghost of herself for so very long. She began to fade years before tonight."

"I'm sorry." Kagome said, because she was.

The man glanced up sharply, pulled from memory. He looked at her as if he had only just remembered she was there. "Don't be," he ordered. "Don't be sorry. She wanted to go. She was tired and incomplete."

"She loved-" she swallowed hard around the sudden tension in her throat, "-loves you. And she was sorry, too."

He leaned back against the pillows and his eyes looked up into the ceiling, as if he could see through to the dimming stars of night.

"I've always known that."

"That she loved you?"

"That she was sorry." Kagome felt her heart flutter painfully as he said, even quieter still, "But I've always known she loved me, too."

And then his eyes closed and the grimace across his brow slowly relaxed as sleep claimed him and nestled him within its shady wings.

She watched the hard lines leave his face, and felt his fingers go limp around her own.

"What was her name, Inuyasha?"

He sighed as he drifted off, but did not utter a word. And that was all right. His love for his priestess was his own, and it was all right if he kept it selfishly guarded.

Kagome sat for a very long time, watching him sleep. When the light that stretched across the floor had lost its pale blue crystalline perfection, when the morning had taken on its first warm hues, she leaned forward and brushed a kiss across his brow.

And left him in the peace he could claim, between waking and dreaming.

* * *

Aeron cast a surreptitious glance at the quiet man at his side. He moved through the corridor like he was one with the shadows. Although the mage had been assured that this man was on their side and posed them no threat, he could not quite help feeling a little less than favorable toward the new stranger. 

Though, some of his discontent might have been due to his cantankerous mood and desperate need for sleep.

Still, despite his discomfiture with the blacksmith from the mountains, he felt inclined, if only a little bit, to say, somewhat tightly, "Thanks."

Sota started suddenly and looked up at him, his long strides faltering. A mild look crossed the man's face, though Aeron had a hard time naming the emotion therein. Feeling a little ungrateful and guilty, Aeron halted in the midst of their paced walk and Sota drifted past him to stop a few feet away.

"Thank you for attempting to help us… back there." He jerked his thumb toward the woods, and glanced away from the sincere newcomer. "I was- _am_," he corrected, "grateful for your help. Even if I did not show it at the time. We all might have been caught up in Sesshoumaru's magic if it hadn't been for your assistance." He stared at the carpet beneath his feet, frowning furiously. "And," he went on, less abrasively, "thank you for looking out for Suzu."

Sota leaned back a little, as if surprised. For a quiet moment the blacksmith studied him before saying simply, "You are welcome."

Aeron looked away again, feeling awkward under the man's perceptive gaze. His attention drifted to the doorway at the end of the hall, where Suzu waited. He started forward, but paused, thinking hard.

"I agree with Kagome," he stated suddenly, like it was a revelation that even he did not know about. "I'm glad you will be staying. It's one more adversary our enemy has to worry about. And one more ally for us to depend on."

And that was about all the thanks he could muster up at that moment, so he swept past the man and into his room, where he closed the door securely, and basked in the loveliest sight he had ever seen.

A bed.

Beckoning him to sleep.

He trudged over to the side of the huge mattress and carefully lowered himself down, reveling in the faint relief that washed across his muscles and bones.

"You cannot sleep like that," Suzu's soft voice intoned from the bathroom doorway.

"Can and will."

A low sigh of exasperation met his ears. "You have become very contrary I think, since I left."

Aeron groaned as he sank fully onto the bed. Feebly, he kicked off his shoes and hunched over to run his hands through his hair and over his aching skull.

"Suzu," he said with weary humor, "I have always been contrary. You should have seen me before I came to Japan. I'm quite sure Kagome wanted to kill me for all my sarcasm. I have not changed a bit. I had no reason to be on my best behavior while you were gone. This is the residual effect of death, little sleep, and a lot of aches and pains."

The woman frowned but he could see she was pleased somewhere under her disapproval.

"Are you so willful that you will sleep in your dirty robes?"

"Yes," he said shortly, reaching out a hand, "now come here."

She obliged and together they crawled up onto the overlarge mattress. Lying on his side he drew the warrior in close, his long arms wrapping around her smaller figure. For a very long time they listened to one another breathe, basking in the feel of living and the absolute pleasure of surviving.

Aeron's hands idly toyed with the frayed sleeves of Suzu's sleepwear as he gathered darkened thoughts.

He inhaled a breath to speak and was startled when she broke the silence first.

"I am sorry I left for so long. I am sorry I left at all."

Aeron sighed against her neck and gently brushed away the dark hair at her nape.

"Don't be sorry," he murmured. He thought for a moment before hesitantly asking the question, "Did you find what you were looking for?"

"I do not know." Though she replied steadily, Aeron could hear the tremor beneath her words. "I saw the place my father lived," she whispered softly, "the place he hid. I do not know what I was looking for. Not really. I only knew I had to go there, that I had to see it for myself."

"And what do you feel now, now that you have done that?"

Her small, calloused hand touched along the back of his, twining her fingers around his own. "I think I may have found peace. Peace with his death. Though his ending only makes me question more."

"How do you mean?"

"When he died…" she faltered and trailed off and next to her Aeron could almost hear her mind working. "Has Sesshoumaru ever told you of my father's power and the sorcery he was capable of?"

Aeron's dark brow rose as he recalled some of his first conversations with the warlord. Somewhat defensively he said, "Yes. He informed me on several occasions that your father had opened the gates to the underworld with his bare hands."

"Not quite by his bare hands alone. But close."

Aeron frowned and dragged a finger along her face. "Why do you ask, Suzu?"

"That was how he died. The enemies he held at bay did not kill him. He opened up the gates to the underworld and threw them inside. And then he followed them down into the mists of the after and let the doors close behind him."

"How- how do you know that?"

She shrugged. "I know my father. And I know the legends and the stories. I also know the sorcery that great men are capable of. I have seen immense and terrible things happen. The Hunters knew many dark secrets of this world and the after. I have seen the mists of death with my own eyes.

"The place where my father died was weak. The air was strained. It was as if it had been torn open and sewn back together. But like a stitch or a suture, the place mended was weakened and imprinted. I could feel the scar that connected life to death. And between the tiny, infinitesimal binds that he used to close the gates between the two worlds, I saw the haze. I smelled the rain and the greens of the wandering forests.

"I do not know what lies beyond the woods of passing. Fairytales tell of paradise, and some of hell. But all I have known is the beginning of death and the opening of doors." She winced against memory and tightened her grip on his hand. "I had no body to bury and no way to say goodbye. I had hoped… I had hoped I would be able to end one part of my life, to bury it with my own hands. But for whatever reason it was not to be."

Aeron's heart twisted wretchedly as he listened to her breath hitch and the tears color her voice.

"There was a reason I went there. I know it. I know there had to be, Aeron. It could not have been in vain. Surely I did not endanger your lives for some foolish sentimental-"

"Good god, Suzu, give me some credit," he interrupted, if only to staunch her tears before they began. "You _did_ teach me how to be a mage and I _do_ have some of your father's power. We managed to mess up royally, but apparently that works well for us because we are all more or less alive. And it was not foolish. You had to go and I understand."

She laughed and he was relieved to hear it. "And what happened on _your_ adventure?"

He was given the distinct impression she was teasing him.

Oh, well. She was much more capable than he. He was quite sure that all he had done she could have accomplished with more flair and less near death experiences.

"Would you believe me if I told you we fought a giant glass dragon and that I exploded it all on my own?" She rolled to face him, incredulous. "Yes," he said, smiling into her face, "I did. And it was very dangerous and I almost died. I almost killed Inuyasha, but he might have deserved it."

Her smile widened and she attempted, in vain, to look disapproving. "I believe you are bragging now, mage."

"I believe," he murmured, nosing her temple where midnight hair gathered, "you are right." He placed a gentle kiss along her cheekbone and then on an eyelid. "And you might have to fight Inuyasha for my affections now."

She raised a dark eyebrow.

"He discovered my talent for baking."

"Oh. That is easily solved." Her index finger brushed across the bridge of his nose and swept up and over the lines on his brow.

"Really?" he asked, combing her short dark hair away from her eyes. "How?"

"Perhaps a sword fight."

"Well, he's sleeping off his injuries now. If you feel threatened you could probably go kill him and no one would know the difference."

Suzu pressed a gentle kiss to his chin. "There is no honor in that. And I already know you are mine."

Aeron's lips spread into a slow smile. "Oh, good. I was worried things would be awkward when you returned and we'd have to sit down and make sure we were compatible. I don't know how much being a mage pays but I can always go back to being an accountant if you're worried that I can't bring in my portion of an income. I didn't even want to get into where we were living. I don't mind traditional houses, but we'd need at least a washing machine and a dryer if we were to go that route."

"We could take time and talk about such things but what does it matter?"

"Very little, I would think, to people like us."

Her hand found his again and she drew it upward to gaze it their fingers and the difference between them. "People like us. Mages?" she murmured questioningly.

"People in the middle of saving the world."

"Of course."

Aeron watched her carefully, a strange mix of anxiety and peace winding him up inside.

"So it's settled then?" She lifted her head to meet his gaze and when she did he could see the weariness in her eyes. "Never mind," he intoned gently as he drew her head to his chest. "We can talk about it later."

A few moments passed and then he heard her whisper, just against his heart, "You need not worry. It is settled. I will always be right here."

And that night, even with her tender declaration winding patterns around his buoying heart, Aeron fell into darkened dreams and twisting paths of no return.

It was not until he woke to the day that he rid himself of the feel of the grey mists that rose to claim all, creeping out from the stitching between life and death.

* * *

Kagome stole out of Inuyasha's room, feeling drained and hauntingly lonely. She needed sleep, but knew she would not find it restful. She needed to see _him_ before she tried to pick up the pieces and reclaim her sanity. She needed to see _him_ before she felt truly safe and reassured. 

When Kagome approached the door to his study, she had not known what to expect, but this was certainly not it.

He was settled back in an overlarge chair, drinking some potent alcohol out of a thick, crystal glass.

It was such a quintessential thing, such a _man_ thing for him to do. Something any human, who happened to be in a bad mood, might resort to. _Of course_ he would sit in the semi darkness and attempt to drown his foul mood in toxins.

Of course.

Kagome gazed at him for a drawn and measured moment before a smile spread across her face, a prelude to the laughter that she could not control.

Sesshoumaru frowned, and gave her a look that plainly asked, '_What_?'

She shook her head and the laughter died as she peered more closely at him. The smile slipped off her face. Her vision seemed blurred. As if the moisture from her shower were still caught in her lashes, the colors around him merged. He emanated silver.

"Inuyasha is sleeping. Finally," she added wistfully. "He seems alright though, despite all he's been through. I think he just needs sleep. And I think Aeron and Suzu and Sota are resting too. Aeron said we'd talk later, about- about what we were going to do about… everything…" she trailed off uselessly.

Sesshoumaru merely blinked at her and carelessly raised the tumbler to his lips. But their eyes did not break over the rim of the glass.

She stepped forward, peering closely at him. At the side of his chair, the Nameless Sword leaned against Daichi-sama, both blades catching the early morning light to glint maliciously.

She looked back at his face; it was even and drawn, giving nothing away. He was different now, surrounded by his weapons and the new day. Sesshoumaru had always radiated power and authority. And that presence had only increased as time rolled on and his sorcery increased.

But now, whole and complete, once and for all, Kagome was near breathless before him.

_This_ was the creature that tore demons apart with his bare hands. _This_ was the being that lived for centuries. _This_ was the king who built kingdoms with his claws.

The final piece of him, the last increments of power that returned with the sword, had restored the icy, grating terror. He had been Sesshoumaru for months, demon king returned. But here was the warlord, son of the great Taisho, regal and cold, sitting within a chair as if it were a throne made of gold.

The windows around the room were open, allowing the early morning breeze to drift in and rifle her hair. She shivered as the warm zephyr drifted across the bare skin of her arms. He was still watching her. His eyes seemed to glow, caught up in staring at her face.

She moved forward, cautiously. When he neither beckoned her nor halted her, she continued, until she was standing above him, looking down and into his face. His head tilted back and the shadows shifted. The grey of the morning light filtered across the high planes of his cheekbones and illuminated the sharp lines across his visage.

Through the sovereignty he was wrapped within she reached out, desperate to catch hold of the normalcy they had created, the right to steal a touch. Her fingers brushed across his cheek, touching uncertainly. When her skin met his she jolted, and her misgivings renewed.

She felt trapped and unsteady. Inhaling a sharp breath she began to retract her fingers, only for his free hand to dart out and wrap around her wrist. She wobbled on her feet and almost wrenched herself free, so startled by the swift movement. Ensnared in his dominating gaze, she could only stare.

His hand tightened around her wrist before slipping away.

He had not given her permission to stop.

She hesitated, but the hard light in his eyes kept her within his spell. And then her hand was moving, drifting over the sharp planes of his cheek, down over his strong jaw line. Manipulating fingers moved across his skin until the rough pads of her fingertips caught against the corner of his lips.

Entranced, she swept her thumb across his mouth, like he had done to her so many times before. His lips parted and she caught sight of one sharp canine. She passed her fingers over the seam between his lips. Her thumb followed last, and her trembling digit _slipped_-

Slipped into his mouth and snagged along the edge of a sharp tooth. She gasped lowly as a brief prick of pain sparked.

She had drawn blood.

He shifted, and his hand was covering her own. Strong and sure fingers curled over hers to hold her perfectly and utterly still as his tongue swept across the infinitesimal cut on her finger. In her chest her heart beat wild and sucked the strength out of her legs.

She met his unflinching gaze, and marveled at the intensity within.

_This_, he was saying with his golden eyes and impossible stare, _is what I am_.

A creature with teeth that could rip and kill. A being with vengeance and honor for blood.

Claws drifted away from her rigid hand to trace up her bare arm, dragging shivers behind. His large palm settled around her neck and jaw, fingers fastened in her hair. He tugged her closer, pulled her face over his own.

"Are you afraid?" he rumbled to the dark.

"Yes," she answered, breathless.

Power rippled through his muscles and limbs, sparked in his eyes. The prickle of his claws on her soft skin heightened the moment and drew it thin and long. He dragged her closer and she stumbled, knees bumping against his own, hands fumbling for a hold. She braced her hands across the chair back, and felt her arms begin to shake.

His lips touched her ear and whispered, low and calm, "Do not fear."

And then his hold was loosening and Kagome slumped and slipped into the chair beside him, limbs weak and unresponsive. She fit snugly against his side, as if she were made to reside there. Her head fell heavy against his chest, one hand across the place his heart thumped, steady and unstoppable inside.

"Do not," he said again, just as quiet and forceful as before, "fear."

"Ok," she whispered.

Whether his declaration applied to himself or the demon enemy out in the wild, she did not know, and so she curled by his side and did her very best not to fear.

When she fell asleep against his chest she drifted off and far away, to a place of grey mists and empty sights. Through the dense air around her, darkened shadows shifted, and it was not until she felt the hard, unrelenting spasm of pain spear her through that the world returned with startling clarity.

Kagome looked down and saw her own sword running her through, her own blood upon her hands.

And when she looked up and toward her enemy, she saw the face of the darkest demon; shrouded in night and uncompromising evil, ready to drag her down to hell.

* * *

The sun rose once and had begun to set again when the six companions gathered in a darkened room deep within the mansion. The light crawled across the floor as over the treetops the golden day faded into oblivion. Kagome sat before them all, a corgi cemented to her feet. 

The rings of Aeron's staff bounced light into the blue corners of the cramped and tense room. The mage's hand rested upon the back of a chair where Suzu sat, absently spinning rose magic between her fingers, her dark eyes following the pacing young Taisho brother, who limped from one side of the room to the other.

Across from the two mages, Sota perched on the edge of a large easy chair, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands folded over his drawn mouth. His gaze was fastened to the ornate rug beneath his feet; eyes tracing the patterns and colors weaved within.

And standing at the farthest wall in the room, his back to the others, stood Sesshoumaru, watching the sun set out the giant picture window he planted himself before. When the last rays of orange disappeared behind the leaves of the trees he turned and swept his eyes over the five people spread around the room.

"Inuyasha."

The man faltered and abruptly stopped pacing, moving to lean back against the wall where he could watch the seated members of their group. Sesshoumaru made his way to the collection of chairs and stopped beside Kagome's.

No one lifted their gaze to him, nor did they chance a look at anyone else.

"So Onigumo knows that Kagome is the Shikon Jewel."

Five pairs of eyes fastened on Aeron.

"Yes," Kagome answered evenly.

Across the room, Inuyasha sighed and ran a hand through his dark, tousled hair. A sharp curse fell softly from his lips and he stared hard at his sword strapped to his hip.

"Then what are we going to do?" Suzu asked calmly, directing her question to the warlord.

"We must collect the pieces of the jewel. Before Onigumo does."

"Wasn't that always the plan?" Aeron inquired softly.

In her chair, Kagome shifted uncomfortably and peeked a glance up at Sesshoumaru.

"It was," she started slowly, "but there's more to it now. Kagura, his puppet, the wind demoness, she told me something before-"

"Before you killed her," Inuyasha interrupted.

Kagome's bright eyes flicked to him and her face hardened imperceptibly. "I did not kill her. She killed herself."

"Why?" Sota had looked up from the carpet and was fixing Kagome with an unreadable stare.

"Because she told me something I was not to know. She told me that Onigumo created a weapon. One that was depraved and threaded with dark and unspeakable things. She said that it created the demoness and the glass creature we fought. And that- that there would be worse things that would come. The blade is incomplete and unfinished. She said that when it was finally wrought… there would be far greater and more terrible things. And she said," Kagome faltered and her gaze went hazy and distant, "that the blade would resurrect him."

Someone within the room inhaled sharply, and another cursed.

"Then we have to go! We have to stop him before it's too late-"

"It is already too late." Sota cut Inuyasha off smoothly. "He will be well hidden and no doubt the forger he has chosen has built up his spells around the place they reside. It would be impossible to reach them before the last mallet has fallen."

Suzu leaned forward in her chair and ran a shaking hand over her ashen face. "Do you know who could make a blade like that?"

Sota laughed softly. "There are many who could. And not all still live and walk the earth. For all we know, he has found a way to travel to the underworld to forge this monstrosity."

"But if you had to guess, out of all the forgers in tales and legends, of all the men your father knew or might have learned from, is there no one you might think of first, who could do such a thing?"

Sota closed his eyes and set his jaw. Over his knees his large hands clenched once and then relaxed.

"There was a man that my father told me of, long ago. I do not know whether he was a man of fiction or reality. Perhaps he was both. He resided in dark caves and deep places. He was mad, driven insane by lust for power, the edges of weapons. He lived for destruction and he was a catalyst for war. He was said to outfit soldiers and marauders, that he knew neither loyalty nor honor."

"What was his name?"

"Totosai."

Sesshoumaru felt a vicious smile crawl across his face. He had heard that name before, in the centuries past. It had been a word that floated around amongst the enemy warlords and shoguns, the encampments full of murderers and wretched creatures.

So Onigumo had found himself a blacksmith, one who matched him for wretchedness.

"If Onigumo has found Totosai," Sota was saying, " or any other blacksmith with the ability to form a sword that housed such evil… It would be a waste of effort to search for the blade. Better, I think, to continue on. At least we might have the jewel when we meet him again."

Inuyasha glowered and crossed his arms over his chest. "So Kagura killed herself because she gave you this information?"

Kagome nodded dully. "She said that there were things worse than death and that she did not wish to live through them… again. I think Onigumo tortured her, but I don't know why."

"Because she failed to succeed in the tasks that were set before her. We survived the monastery when we were to be killed." Sesshoumaru gestured to the sword at his side, "And once again, his minion failed to claim the weapon."

"She would rather kill herself than live?" Aeron pondered in a hushed and haunted voice.

"Yes," Sesshoumaru stated bluntly.

The mage looked ill.

"Alright, we'll go after the jewel. Do we even know where the rest of it is?" Inuyasha pushed away from the wall to sidle closer to the group, his eyes resting on the Protector, who at that exact moment, was staring at one fisted hand lying limply in her lap.

"I have an idea," she murmured softly as she uncurled her fingers to reveal the tiny sliver of magical power. Hazy rose light settled across her face as she looked upwards and met the eyes of her companions. "It's just a feeling, like they always are. But it's more intense now. Probably thanks to this." She held up the fragment of the gem and smiled ruefully. "I had a dream last night and I think I know where we need to go."

The tension in the room lessened, and like an audible sigh, Sesshoumaru felt the others relax, if only a little. But Kagome was still speaking, and something in her tone had changed from soft assurance to hard conviction.

"But one thing has to be made clear here and now." Her hand closed once more over the jewel and her steely eyes passed over each face in the room, save Sesshoumaru, hovering just next to her. "This is my duty and mine alone. You can only go so far with me. We will never succeed if you follow me to the end."

"What are you saying?" Aeron asked, frowning.

She pinned him with a hard look. "That I am the only one who can gather the shards. It is my job. I can't find them if you shadow me. I can't succeed if you interfere."

"You expect us to just let you wander into the midst of battle? Like you did to get that piece?" Inuyasha pointed an angry, shaking finger at her fist. "I don't think anyone here would agree to that, Kagome.

"Someone already did." Aeron looked away as she spoke. "And I found the jewel and survived."

"You fought a demoness!" Inuyasha countered angrily. "You were lucky!"

"Yes, I know. But that doesn't change the fact that _this is not your job_. You are not some mythic weapon, Inuyasha."

"Well, you don't know that you aren't either!"

Kagome exhaled angrily and her fingers found their way to her temples where she massaged them against her head.

"I don't care what I am or what I'm not. That isn't going to change what I know I have to do. I _have_ to do this. Alone. There is only so much that can be done to protect me. The rest is up to me." She dropped her hands and cast a pleading look up at Sesshoumaru.

The warlord studied her face for a moment, curbing his own displeasure and rising ire.

"Tell me you don't agree with this," Inuyasha demanded, and his words were for Sesshoumaru alone.

When the warrior said nothing, Inuyasha's shoulders slumped in defeat, and a betrayed look crossed his face.

"Let her do it," Sota intoned quietly. "It is the only way. If she cannot then no one can."

"I don't doubt your capabilities, Kagome, it's just that-"

"I know," she cut off the younger Taisho brother, "I know you don't. But this is the way it is. There is nothing else we can do. This is mine." She held the jewel up before him and it winked into the dark. "You don't have to like it but you do have to trust me."

"I don't have to do either of those things," the stubborn man muttered, "but I will."

Relieved, the woman smiled and the tension melted out of her limbs. "Thank you, Inuyasha."

Sesshoumaru watched his brother fade back to his place by the wall, a palpable, helpless fury stirring in his eyes.

"What about the sword?" asked Aeron, leaning heavily on the back of Suzu's chair.

"What of it?"

The mage smiled darkly. "What happened last night? What happened to the two of you?"

"I reclaimed the sword as my own. The last piece of my power was given back to me, and now, the sword is as it always should have been, under my dominion."

Aeron was listening to Sesshoumaru, but he was studying Kagome. "So, what, Kagome gave you back the sword somehow? Wasn't that how it worked?"

"It's a little more complicated than that, Aeron," Kagome whispered.

The mage looked displeased. "Care to explain it?"

"No, she does not." Sesshoumaru's hands fell from where they rested against the sword hilt. The sharpened points of his nails grazed one of Kagome's hands, lying on the armrest of the chair.

Aeron swallowed the retort he was bound to utter and tightened his jaw. One of his hands tightened on the staff he carried, but a gentle word from Suzu calmed him and set him in his place.

Silence fell and strained.

"We will depart in three days," Sesshoumaru informed them when he felt he had their attention once more, "and I expect we will not return soon. Prepare accordingly."

Inuyasha turned on his heel and slammed out of the room, the door banging impressively against the wall. The others rose mutely and slowly followed in his wake. He watched each of them leave, each with varying levels of distress and anxiety across their faces, in the way they walked.

Kagome was the last to leave. She paused in the doorway and opened her mouth to say something before seeming to cut herself off short. When she looked up at him she smiled, but the gesture did not reach her eyes.

"Sleep well."

And then she turned and left, and took the remaining daylight with her.

* * *

Kagome was uneasy during her final days at Sesshoumaru's mansion, the place that had inadvertently become her home as well. 

She was overwhelmed with guilt, because this time there was a very good possibility she would truly be leaving her beloved pet behind. Sesshoumaru had ordered his staff to vacate the premises. He felt it was too dangerous for anyone to stay. And with the people he entrusted Ajax would go.

She knew it was for the best. She couldn't bear living if anything bad befell him. But despite her reassurances that he would be well and taken care of, she could not stop feeling as if somehow, she had let him down.

Before everyone else there had been Ajax and he had been the only one in the world to depend on her.

Funny, now the _entire_ world needed her.

Sitting in the corner of a hallway, away from everyone else, on the eve before they departed to their last and final adventure, Kagome hugged her dog close and buried her face his fur.

Her visions had not resurfaced since she returned, but at night her dreams were vivid and her nightmares were so real she felt as if she could not wake from them. Each dream was very nearly the same. She followed a path, a set trail. In her mind she saw the waves of the ocean, the tawny sands of desert stone, and the high unyielding flames of fire.

The figures through the grey had become clearer too. At times Kagome was sure she knew who they were. Sometimes they were Sesshoumaru or Inuyasha, Aeron, Suzu, or Sota. And sometimes they were enemies. And sometimes they were people from her past, people she had never met, distant and hazy reflections of lives forgotten.

But always, always the dreams would end in mist and the steel edge of a sword. Every time it ended with blood on her hands.

She peered at her fingers, ruffling up Ajax's course fur. They were clean, scarred, but devoid of the brilliant vermillion splashed across her dreams.

Closing her eyes she leaned toward her dog. "I'm sorry," she whispered in his ear. "I am so sorry."

Outside dawn was breaking, and the third day was upon her. She rose to her feet, adjusting her clothes, and tried to ignore her shaking fingers. She ran her hands through her hair, pulled it back and away from her face. Her hands deftly adjusted the belt and scabbard at her waist, now empty of a sword. It felt wrong to leave the belt behind. It was stranger still, without the familiar weight of her blade. At times it had been the only thing that made her feel as if she had the right to claim herself the Protector.

Bending down to the floor she reached for her pack and slung it over her shoulder. Ajax sat before her, watching her curiously.

"Stay here. Be a good boy." She kissed him on the nose and rose once more to her feet.

She straightened her shoulders and walked down the hallway as it filled with sunlight.

Ajax didn't follow her. And for that she was grateful.

She had packed away her things, made her bed, re-shelved all the books she had read within Sesshoumaru's library, spent time with Ajax.

Now there was only one thing Kagome needed to do before she left. Just one.

She made her way to the small, private museum where Sesshoumaru housed all the things he had saved once, before he had saved her. It was bright inside the room full of glass and ancient things.

She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light bouncing off the floor and through the glass. Holding her hand up before her eyes she gazed at the chamber and almost missed the faint shadow of the warlord, his pale form near hidden against the day.

Her hands slid over the doorknob behind her and she pulled the door closed. Her eyes were leveled on the pristine floor but she could see his reflection from the window, his long, vague shadow stretched to her feet. He was half turned, watching her as intensely as he had in his study two nights before.

Leaning back she pressed her against the door and raised her eyes to look at him, and her breath caught painfully within her chest.

His handsome face was distorted by the sheen over the room, but even blurred and indistinct he was a sight to behold. The light bleached the world outside the window, and smeared his edges into morning. He wore the white silk she had seen him in on her first day in Japan.

When he spoke he disrupted her thoughts so thoroughly that she jumped.

"We are ready."

She blinked at him, felt her hear tumble and skip into an offbeat rhythm.

"Are we?" she asked softly to the sun and the light and the man who shaped the world with steel and death.

"Are you not ready?" He watched her like he expected her to flee, and took a single, torturous step toward her.

"No, I'm not ready. Not just yet."

He nodded, as if that was the answer he had expected to hear. And then he was weaving an agonizingly slow trail toward her, passing by the glass cases. His image disappeared into a distorted splotch of white and gold, only to appear again, nearer, closer still. The white silk rippled and sighed as he moved, the only noise over her hesitant breath. Fate was daring her to think, to hold steady a gaze that burned with a history so intense it spanned time itself.

Slipping behind another case and around and back again, standing just before her, illuminated by the backdrop of light and glass and precious, broken things, he asked her, "Are you afraid?"

She shook her head.

"Not of the future?"

"No," she whispered, "not anymore."

"Not of the demon?"

"No."

"Not of me?"

"No." A small, nearly invisible smile lifted the corner of her lips.

Kagome took a step forward and they were so close, all she had to do lean forward for her head to touch his chest. They refrained from touching though, and between them the air strained with all the emotions they caught and kept.

It seemed so stupid and wasteful that they had held themselves separate and apart for so long. But then, she knew, time had distorted itself since she met him. What felt like months were only a days, and what felt like years were only months.

Only a few months, and here she was, strained and uncertain. There was no more room for hesitancy though, not when the future was so dark and bloody. Every moment leading up to the present had only sought to bring them closer.

And there was no going back.

They knew that now.

Knew it by the way the sword at his waist hummed with electric power. Power she had given him, because she trusted him implicitly.

No, there was no way turn back time or fix the broken thing they had made.

And all that was left was this one thing that Kagome needed.

_Just one_.

Her fingers stretched. They found his right hand, dangling by his side. She had been afraid three nights ago, frightened of a creature she both understood and could never truly fathom. She had been frightened of their mistakes and what they meant for the future. But that was gone now, because she could not afford to waste a moment.

His hand was so much larger than hers, and as she carefully lifted it, she marveled at the sharp edges of his claws, the dark streaks across his wrist. The fingers of her left hand drifted over the back of his. Her calloused fingertips traced the valleys of his knuckles, memorized the gaps between his fingers. Cradling his hand in both of hers, she bent her head and pressed a grateful kiss along the joints of his hand.

Over each ridge and within each valley, over the backs of his fingers, and down to his fingertips she traced her lips. She looked up and over his hand, limp and lax within her grip.

A line of concentration formed across his perfect brow and furrowed until the imperious emotion that crossed his face might have been mistaken for anger. Behind his stony walls she could feel the unchecked power flutter away to leave the man she had dragged down from a throne. He breathed in once, slow and easy, as if accepting the ramifications of disappointing actions.

Sharp and curt he pulled his hand away from hers and reached arrogant fingers to curl around her neck and jaw. Strong appendages, made more from steel and death than flesh and bone, tightened fractionally. A thumb drew across her bottom lip and his nail dragged a tiny trickle of blood behind it.

He stared at her mouth, and transfixed, he stepped closer. He lifted her face and melded old memory and stuttered unfinished caresses with where they were, here and now.

"Do not fear," he whispered, and he was so firm in his declaration that Kagome wanted to ask him, needed to know-

_Do you see my dreams? Do you dream of me, with blood on my hands?_

_ Do you see me die?_

_ Are _you_ afraid?_

But it was too late to ask.

And a heartbeat later she did not care.

A gentle touch, a breath, a moment that snapped and burned over into something new.

His lips found the corner of hers, and tried to steal her secrets. His fingers wrapped surely around her throat, and kept her his willing prey. His feet held him steady and stronger, and helped him push her back until she met the wall.

And all his uncertainty pressed down and in, and in a single moment he showed her what she had done to him, how far down, she a simple, silly girl, had dragged him.

He kissed her the way he had meant to many times before. He kissed her so hard and sure that she felt every minute of the time between them, wrapped in the pressure of his mouth on hers.

She was the thing that broke him down completely… and built him back up again.

He almost hated her for this. It was in the sharp sting of teeth against her tongue, and the grip against her neck. She could taste it in his kisses; growing harder and deeper the longer they broke the promises and rules that had kept them apart. He hated her so very much for ruining everything. It had been so neat and tidy before her. But she was good at ruining things and turning them into whatever they were now, there in the sunlit day.

He hated her and _oh_-

_Oh_, how he could do nothing but worship her for it, dig his claws into the smooth skin of her back, leave half moon circles of blood behind, lie to her over and over again, tell her not to fear, do not fear, do not fear-

He loathed her but could not let her go, could never, ever, go back to the sordid, heavy, empty history he had left behind to protect the unworthy life in his arms. He could pin her to the wall, drag her to the floor, and she would have fallen willingly, into whatever defeat he wished to suffer in.

But he did not want to pull her under, instead pressed in as close as space would allow, and tried in vain to fold her into the neat little corner she had created for herself, somewhere inside his mind and the spaces in between. Because it was there that he could keep her safe and forever as she was.

Her hands against his chest, a gasp across his mouth. She couldn't think to inhale between that hands that held her face steady. His lips glided away from hers, pressed across her brow, her eyelids, her cheeks, the dip of skin above her mouth.

His touches gentled, his lips eased away, until bruising pressure was only a faint recollection on skin.

For breathless minutes, hours maybe, days perhaps, he eased her back to the reality they had yet to face. He ended it where he began, sealed the corner of her lips with his own.

His breath wound into her ear as he leaned into her. Through the dizzy, unreal brightness of a second she was enveloped once more in the overwhelming need to ask him-

Are you afraid?

But she leaned her forehead against the juncture of his neck and shoulder, bit down the question that she could not bear to ask, and murmured in its place, "Now, I am ready."

And when he took her hand and led her out into the sunshine, though they walked toward their enemies and a path that ended in a dream filled with blood, Kagome forgot to fear.


	46. Into the Earth

_Fuck. Fuck, just take it! I can't look at it anymore. Take it and run. And then swing back around and leave a review, because, damn it, I like them! Oh, and pardon the awkward breakers, there's something wrong with ffnets edit thingy._

**-O-**

**Chapter 46**

**Into the Earth**

They headed north. Not because Kagome knew, inexplicably, that it was the route to go, but because it _felt_ right. That and the wind seemed more inclined to blow that way. With the aid of the whispering zephyr she envisioned the sea, the northernmost island of the Japan. Beyond the lapping waves she saw the mountains rising high above plains between.

And there, faint and fleeting, was a wavering voice, one that reminded her of the strength of the wind. But it was a cadence that grated and shifted, a different yet complimentary power to the one clutched in her hand.

Like the first time she set out to claim a piece of the jewel, the land became a wild place, and magic she could neither see nor feel seemed to guide them around and away from the outside world. They traveled through the woodlands, the bamboo forests, around the side of a mountain, over a plateau, into the night, through the day.

Conversation was stilted and words were few. It seemed blasphemous to break the quiet they had so astutely wrapped themselves within, but Kagome was more than relieved when several days after leaving the safety of Sesshoumaru's lands, Sota appeared at her side.

Night had fallen, and they had taken cover on the side of a mountain, atop a ridge. They perched at the edge of a forest nestled haphazardly against the towering slopes of peaked ridges. Kagome had found the hillside an agreeable place to watch the sunset.

Sota appeared out of the trees and descended gracefully, the ends of his cloak snapping in the summer breeze. They watched the sunlight fade into the brilliant watercolors of oranges, reds, golds, and twilights of coming night. High in the pinnacle of the sky the stars began to shine and the half moon glowed with pearly light.

The blacksmith sighed contentedly, and for a moment Kagome convinced herself that they were not in the midst of a life and death struggled, and instead, were enjoying the end of a summer day, carefree and unburdened.

The man propped his chin in his hand, dark eyes searching the deepening night. Sitting placidly next to him was the dented and scratched shield, the same one he had used to save Kagome's life atop the cold, snowy mountain. She reached out and brushed her fingertips across the mar in the metal, her touch hovering over a blemish resembling a scorch mark.

"This was the first of the weaponry that I ever crafted," he offered, not taking his eyes off the sky. "My father helped me craft it. He told me that it would serve me well when I was grown into a warrior." His lips twisted into a blithe smile. "It should be retired and hung upon a wall, but I cannot seem to part with it. There are far too many memories forged within."

Kagome retracted her wandering hand, feeling guilty for encroaching on something so private. "I'm sorry-"

"For what?" He turned his knowing gaze on her and the apology died in her throat.

"I- I don't know."

Sota's smile widened and the corners of his eyes wrinkled. "I told you because I wanted you to know. You seem to think you will insult me with your curiosity."

Kagome shrugged. "I know some things are personal. Grief, memories, the past."

"Yes, some things are. But I think that at times it is more prudent to share them than to lock them away. Do you not agree?"

Kagome twisted slightly, and her eyes wandered back to their camp hidden in the foliage. Through the dark, twisting tree trunks she saw a trace of silver, the smooth movement of a warrior, the flicker of his golden eye, always and forever fixed upon her.

"Yes," she murmured, "I do."

The blacksmith lifted his hands to his cloak, and his fingers reached within his garments. He fumbled around his neck for a moment before extracting something. It winked into the fading day, and Kagome squinted her eyes to see it better.

Held carefully between his fingers was a long, thin, silver chain, and attached to its end was a tiny glass bottle.

He lifted the necklace and bauble over his head. Extending his hand toward her, he motioned for Kagome to take it. Against her skin the glass and metal were warm. He wore them next to his skin, over his heart.

Sota prodded the tiny bottle with a finger. "My father made this. He was never adept at glass blowing, but it was a talent he wished he could have mastered. I am sure that had he the time and fewer enemies," he laughed a little and his face looked younger beneath his smile, "he would have expanded his marginal skills." He paused, and drew in a breath.

"He made this for my mother." Kagome looked up sharply. Before she could form a reply, he continued on, "He gave it to her once and then years later he returned it to me."

"You didn't know your mother?"

"No, I did not." He let his eyes wander back to the night sky. "I am sure Sesshoumaru has told you some of my father's history. That he was once a great warrior for shoguns and kings? A samurai with enormous strength and the talent to rival any other soldier?" He slid her a questioning glance and she nodded. "I cannot say for certain that all the tales about him, nor," he added, another little laugh lightening his words, " the stories _he_ told of _himself_ were true. But I do know that he was a fighter born and bred. And Sesshoumaru battled by his side. No man could rise that high if he were not great and terrible, proficient in the killing art. To walk beside a being, to be an ally of that creature," he nodded his head back toward their camp, "one would have to be talented indeed."

Kagome was struck with the double meaning behind his words, and felt an uneasy emotion rise in the shadow of his statement. Did that not mean they, the four humans and half-blooded brother, were great and terrible too?

She supposed it did, and strangely, she felt both a surge of pride and a sickening sensation of wretched wrongdoing. Her eyes fell to the hands in her lap, the fingers that had, whether on purpose or on accident, helped run a living thing through.

Swallowing the sour bile rising in her throat, she pulled her attention back to Sota, now watching her with keen interest. When their eyes met he drew in a steady breath and spoke at length.

"My father was a master of the sword. His enemies were spread far and wide. And those adversaries were dangerous, not to be trifled with. When killing is your business you expect to be hunted. He went into hiding and lived, I am sure, in relative happiness as a forger. Fighting may have been in his very blood, but it was forging that called to him. After he helped Sesshoumaru make the nameless blade and fight the demon, his life was again in danger. He hid for centuries. And then, through fate and perhaps a little bad luck, he met my mother."

"Why do you say bad luck?" Kagome questioned, confused.

Sota sighed, and in the exhalation Kagome heard regret and the recollection of painful memories. "It was dangerous for her to fall in love with a wandering Ronin. It was dangerous for me too. After I was born my father took me from her. He kept me with him because he was capable of defending me. And he left her because he loved her. It was bad luck because he never intended to feel for her. Love, you see, ruined everything.

"I never _knew_ my mother. But I knew _of_ her. My father told me stories about her. She helped him forget what he ran from. A little over twenty years ago, when I was eight, he gave me this." He pointed to the item in her hand. "He saw her once more before he left and brought this back to me. He told me to keep it safe. I believe she gave it back to him because it was dangerous. They could leave no traces between them. To do so was to ask for death."

Kagome ran a finger over the thin chain. "Why did he leave?"

"He never said. But I have my suspicions."

"Why do you think he left?"

Sota turned and leveled her with one of his soft, unreadable looks. "I think he left to draw off his enemies, to save my mother and I from what he had brought upon us. I think after all his hiding; he exposed himself to the world to keep us safe. I think he had a very good reason to leave when he did. One that I only now realize."

Kagome did not know what to say to that. Sympathy seemed too little to give him.

"Do you remember when I met you in the monastery?"

"Yes," she replied, running her fingers distractedly over the necklace.

"And do you recall what I said to you?"

"You said that I reminded you of someone you once knew."

He nodded. "I liked you immediately, Kagome. You remind me very much of the my father." He smiled at her startled surprise. "You have a warrior's spirit about you. It is not unlike the soldiers of the stories, the men my father fought beside. That is," he stated easily, "probably exactly why I like you."

"Because I remind you of your father?" she sounded a little incredulous, but flattered, too.

"And you are very stubborn, and will never give up. I like that about you also. I was always wary of the outside world. I had been raised to fear it. My father wanted me to be a capable warrior, but it was difficult when we hid and ran, chased by nightmares and shadowy fears. I found it much simpler to make things with my hands and abhor the killing my father dispensed so easily. I was too weak to fight for him, to fight for his memories."

"I don't think that's a weakness," Kagome murmured gently. "I rather like that about _you_."

Sota laughed softly. "Thank you. I only say that because I admire your strength and ability to adapt. I was born into the ways of the old world, the death and destruction, and could not bear to become a part of it. You were thrown into it, and willingly risk your life and soul for this war against demons and evil. _That_ is why you are familiar to me. You are brave and capable, like one of the few persons I have ever admired."

"Oh," Kagome intoned. She grappled for something to say in return, but found his confession to have successfully stripped her of speech. "Thank you," she finally managed, her head whirling suddenly with broken fragments of thoughts and images, ideas that were not her own. She grappled mentally, tried to pin them down. They were fleeting and vague, ghosts of something more.

Sorting through the surge was difficult, and when her head finally settled, she was surprised to hear herself ask, "Why did he make her a bottle of glass?"

Sota reached for the trinket and held it up before both their eyes. "I imagine," he started, in a hushed and reverent voice, "that he believed it would be important to someone, someday. That maybe, in the future, it would find its way into the hands of an individual who could use it and treasure it."

He gently laid the necklace back down in her palm and closed her fingers over it. "I noticed you carry the jewel in your hand. That must be tiring. Are you afraid you will lose it?" he teased gently, his mild smile shinning out into the dark. "I think you should keep this."

He patted the fingers closed around the necklace and then reached for her other hand and drew it into her lap. A knowing look passed across his face, and she read sympathy in his eyes.

He knew it was a burden, a greater task than any, to be named something so significant. He knew it better than perhaps she herself did. And if this were the only thing he could give to help her, then he would do so willingly. He would leave his forges and the safety of anonymity to give her his most prized item. He would break his own promises and draw a sword and spill blood to help her.

Kagome's chest knotted with a painful, hollow longing. But what could she say to express such gratitude? He didn't want her words or an embrace of thanks. He wanted her to succeed.

"You can do this," he said as he rose, and the note of trusting finality was so absolute, Kagome wanted to weep for all his faith.

She watched him fade into the dark, a whisper and a shadow following his graceful form. It was not until she had deposited the shard of the Shikon Jewel into the glass bottle, held it up before her eyes and fastened the necklace around her neck that she registered who the mysterious, quiet man reminded her of.

She turned, sought his outline, but by then he had successfully melted into night.

Kagome looked up at the stars, her fingers cradling the smooth glass of his gift, and wondered numbly why the man from a mountaintop smiled the way her mother had before she died.

**-O-**

They made it to the northern shore. Their journey was hampered by rain and their own anxieties. On several occasions they were forced to seek shelter within the forests. Strange auras of energy and power wafted over the winds, and at those times Sesshoumaru pulled them into the depths of the woodland to wait in silent apprehension.

But they met no enemies, even as they sensed watchful eyes upon them. They knew they would meet Onigumo again, and the uncertainty lay in whether the meeting would be on his grounds or theirs. Looking over their shoulders did little to alleviate anxiety, but it was better than watching a giant draconic glass figure attempt to rip them to shreds.

So, really, it was an improved trip overall.

Kagome tried to convince herself of this every time the warlord paused and gripped his sword.

Thus far she had failed miserably.

They came upon the ocean at early morning but made no immediate move to cross the watery expanse. Kagome assumed Sesshoumaru had his reasons for waiting, and took the time to relish the sea. Over the moving ocean the summer day had turned grey, and on the winds there was a promise of rain.

She clambered atop a large boulder, and let her legs dangle down over the foamy waves. Some ways away Aeron and Suzu paused to speak, and Kagome smiled when she saw the mage slip his hand into his lover's. He bent his head to speak to her, to whisper secret things. Even from the distance she sat, Kagome could see the brilliance of Suzu's smile.

Good. They deserved a little happiness amongst all the darkness and certain death. She sighed dreamily, and a fuzzy warmth filled her chest to ripple down body and dredge shivers from her inner romantic. If anyone merited a little good fortune and someone to lavish with love, it was Aeron, the once cranky accountant turned sarcastically endearing mage.

She hoped they would have enough time together. Enough time to live and survive outside the nightmares. It was silly, but as she watched the ocean, she envisioned the vague shapes of children scrabbling around the mages' knees. She snorted humorlessly at her presumption and looked back out over the sea.

The sound of grating rock interrupted her contemplation as a dark head appeared over the boulder she perched on. Inuyasha's amber eyes emerged next, and though they still held their former twinkle of mischief and devilish humor, the emotions within were considerably less bright.

"Hey," he puffed as he heaved himself over the rock.

She grinned at him, enjoying his graceless fumble to sit beside her. As he settled he made a disgusted noise at the back of his throat and leaned forward to peel a piece of seaweed off his foot.Kagome laughed. He threw her a glare.

Comfortable silence descended, and they enjoyed a moment together, watching the morning tick by.

It was a long time before he said, "You don't have your sword anymore."

Kagome winced at the memory.

Kagura's hands upon her own, fingers deftly manipulating the blade to plunge into the demoness' belly and end her life.

"I left it on accident. I didn't even think about it until I was up and out of the valley. By then it was too late to go back for it," she finished a little mournfully.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Inuyasha giving her a sympathetic look. "I'm sorry. I uh-" he cleared his throat uncomfortably, "I understand how you feel. I've grown quite attached to my sword. I would never want to lose it."

She felt herself shrug and a heavy sigh left her lips. "I don't know. I loved that stupid sword, but I think it might be better where it was left."

"Buried in the stomach of a demoness?"

"Yes," she answered bluntly. "Kagura risked a lot to give me that information. At the very least her death was a convincing show that she was still loyal to Onigumo. That she died at the hands of an enemy." Kagome trailed off contemplatively and stared out over the horizon darkening with a passel of clouds.

"She wasn't trying to help us, Kagome. Despite her, yes, I admit, very fortunate information, she was a traitor. And that is a very good reminder of her duplicitous and untrustworthy character," Inuyasha murmured, picking listlessly at a piece of seaweed.

"No, I know. But I still feel like she deserved something for what she did. Maybe it's naïve to believe, but I like to think that everyone is capable of redemption. No matter how twisted."

The man laughed harshly and picked the slimy, green leaf up between his forefinger and thumb, nose wrinkling distastefully. "You _are_ naïve. She was evil. If she ever saw you again she'd kill you as soon as look at you. And she certainly would have killed you if she hadn't needed you."

Kagome knew he was right, and didn't see the merit in arguing with him. But that didn't change what had happened between her and the demoness, what Kagmoe and seen in Kagura's eyes. She let Inuyasha's rebuke roll of her back and tried to dispel the memory of her blade running through flesh, crimson erupting beneath.

He must have sensed her unease because not a breath later he was saying, somewhat gruffly, "Well, you did a good job getting the jewel even if you were irresponsible and almost died and made Aeron listen to your stupidity which probably somehow ended in me being sliced to ribbons."

Oddly touched, Kagome smiled. "I tried."

"We'll have to get you another sword. You can't wander around defenseless."

Kagome laughed. "Where are we going to find another sword? Haven't you noticed we're on the edge of the ocean?"

He narrowed his eyes on her. "I _know_, Kagome, I just think…"

But Kagome wasn't listening. She was staring out over the rolling waves, unfocused and unseeing. A chill swept up her spine. She washed cold as a faint tingling sensation faded away, leaving a distinct impression of power and thirst. She stiffened, and turned sharply, searching the wilderness for the owners of the magic on the air.

Beside her, Inuyasha had gone very still, and a moment later she felt his hand catch hold of her wrist and squeeze.

"What is it?" she whispered, her eyes immediately seeking out the tall and proud warlord, firm and defined against the shore. His hands were on his swords, muscles tensed for action. He was listening with sharp precision, searching and stretching out his magic to grasp hold of the spine-tingling tremor hovering over them.

"I don't know. Magic. Power. A spell. Something."

"Is it _him_?"

Inuyasha's fingers dug into his leg, his grip tightened on her arm. He stared hard at the dips and valleys of the rock beneath them.

"I don't know. I don't… I don't think so."

"You don't think so?" she hissed despairingly. Her fingers inched to her scabbard and grasped nothing but air.

Damn it. She hadn't missed her sword as much in her melancholy musings as she did now, facing down real danger.

She strained against the sounds of the natural world, desperate to catch something with her ears or her mind. It might have been paranoia, but she thought she felt eyes upon her.

"Wait here," Inuyasha ordered in an undertone as he jumped down from their rock. She watched from the corner of her eye as he strolled leisurely down the beach, feigning carelessness, kicking sand and rocks, pausing to look at something, squatting down to pick at a shell.

But she knew the situation was far from safe by the way Sesshoumaru's eyes darted to her and pinned her down. She saw Inuyasha's hand rise to his rosary, probably more of a reflex than a conscious thought, and felt her own apprehension spike.

Blindly, she sought the necklace beneath her shirt, suddenly her own security blanket in a moment of stifling uncertainty. She did not risk taking it out, in case the odd feeling of watchful eyes was not a delusion brought on by rising panic. Still, even with the cloth barrier between her fingers and the smooth glass, she felt a brief comfort relax the tension in her shoulders and clear the alarmed thoughts from her mind.

Against her skin the wind whispered cool and soft. It was distracting, plucking at her hair, murmuring in her ear. The horizon darkened, slowly blackened with harsher clouds. Over the sea the faint rumble of thunder danced and sprang, rolled with the summer breeze.

Rain. Storms. Air.

The churning, the confusion, the disruption. The crashing of the waves against the shore. A maelstrom so dangerous it could kill.

_A storm can be a friend, a savior, if brought by the right wings. _

"Yes," she breathed, hand clutching the jewel, "bring me the wind."

The gale laughed, dark and deep and terribly dangerous, and then the ominous presence, the power of the tiny weapon spread far and wide and reigned in the darkness.

"Kagome."

She could not take her eyes from the clouds, amassing across the channel.

"What?" she asked tonelessly.

Sota hesitated as he glanced toward the storm. When he looked at her again the worry in his gaze was replaced with awe… and fear.

Startled by his reaction she looked back to the sky.

"My god," she whispered.

"I do not think," Sota murmured, as he slowly extended a hand to her, "that we should stay here. Not with this unexpected storm." Kagome felt a wave of fear wash out her insides. "We must go," the man stated urgently"before the storm arrives. Before-"

"Before we are caught by our demons," the Protector finished darkly.

Thunderheads moved and merged, and soon the last patches of sunlight faded to the rumbling sounds of the ocean and the gathering storm. With a final sigh, an exhalation of the tension building on the air, the firmament opened wide and drained its tears into the sea. They reached Sesshoumaru as the first drops of rain pebbled the rocky beach.

Kagome huddled near the blacksmith and looked up at the warlord. He passed a glance over her and she saw the way he scrutinized the jewel beneath her shirt, the way his eyes hardened, the dangerous, aggravated glint flicker and spark behind enigmatic walls of gold. Sota gave Kagome's shoulder a squeeze and slipped away, and when she looked back at Sesshoumaru he was stone, unreadable.

Ten feet away, Suzu, Inuyasha, and Sota gathered. Inuyasha stared out into the wilderness and untangled one loop of his rosary. At the same moment Aeron appeared at Kagome's side, a fierce and angry look of concentration upon his brow and drawn in the lines around his pinched mouth

In what looked like a gesture of supplication, Suzu's arms rose and her hands spread apart. A rosy light gathered between her fingers and hand, and beside her, Sota and Inuyasha added their magic to aid her spell. When their hands brushed the circle of light created, the winds around them shifted, gathered power, and surged. In a moment they flickered and were gone, whisked away on the wind and rain.

Abruptly, Sesshoumaru's arm came across her back, pulling Kagome to him. She stumbled and fell heavily against his chest, surprised by the sudden and forceful move. Aeron's hand dropped to her shoulder and his fingers gripped so tightly she gritted her teeth to offset the slight pain.

The air rippled around them. Sesshoumaru's head bent and she felt his breath disturb the hair next to her ear.

"It is not the demon."

"What is it?" she mashed against his chest, her lips tickling as they brushed against damp silk.

"Something else."

Kagome's heart leapt, and as if to coincide with the spike in her anxiety, her vision faded into darkness.

When her feet hit the ground strong arms helped her to the sand. Somewhere nearby she heard Aeron groan and Inuyasha retch. Suzu's magic fluttered uncertainly in the air, like an erratic heartbeat. A hand grazed her own and she heard Sota murmur her name. She patted his fingers with her trembling ones, before daring to sit up and open her eyes. She nearly lost the contents of her stomach when she did, but forced herself to focus on staying conscious.

They had landed where they intended, across the break in the islands. The beach of this coast was softer, and spread wide with sand instead of rough rocks and pebbles. The shoreline effortlessly melted into main land of the northern isle. Mountains rose high and clouds hung low.

Kagome stood uneasily and braced her hand against the wet sand. Blood rushed to her head and she straightened, only to feel the air rush from her lungs as her sight was suddenly ripped from the scene and thrown to the wilderness behind her.

Her vision warped and twisted, flew her on a path through the roads between the mountains, to the base of a cliff and a hidden pass into a rocky domain. The green of the land melted into sparse, twisted territory. There was a spark of awareness, the faltering of a heartbeat, a shadow of a man turning and facing the very southern shore.

As if she had been struck, Kagome fell, weak kneed, to the sand. Sudden dizziness, coupled with the vertigo from Aeron's displacing sorcery, had her sick on the sand, split her head in two.

Strong, steadying hands grasped her face and held her steady as she writhed. She could feel the sharp points of claws grace the sensitive skin of her scalp and temples. Thumbs pressed against her cheekbones and warmth slivered into her mind. The pressing, panicky feeling of magical overexertion faded away. Her fingers touched along the back of Sesshoumaru's hands, finding comfort where his skin met hers.

"Further north and into the mountains," she whispered hoarsely, cracking her eyes back open.

She stared up into his golden gaze. Around them the rain fell heavier and the wind howled frighteningly. Displeasure and undermining worry were hidden beneath the layers of his cool reserve.

He helped her to her feet and pulled her away from the crashing, rising waves. The others were rising off the ground, each looking ashen and exhausted. Kagome clutched at Sesshoumaru's arm as he half carried, half dragged her up and off the beach.

"I think there was someone up there, in the mountains, in my vision. I don't know who though," she managed to utter brokenly as her feet slipped on the uneven ground.

"All the more reason to move quickly and quietly," he responded easily. He wasn't happy to hear that though, the hand on her arm tightened fractionally before he gently deposited her in Inuyasha's shaking arms.

"Get up," he ordered. "We must leave now."

Inuyasha swayed a little on his feet, and concerned, Kagome laid a steadying hand upon his shoulder. He sent her a grimace before glaring at Suzu, who smiled good-naturedly in return.

"That was the most painful way to transport that I have ever experienced," he snapped as he leaned on Kagome.

"It was better than swimming," was the woman's light reply.

Grumbling unhappily, still a little dizzy, he bent and hoisted Kagome onto his back.

"Come!" Sesshoumaru snarled through the rain and thunder, his shape almost indistinguishable against the downpour.

They followed his command, slipped off the beach and into the lands beyond, small and incomprehensible beneath the darkened sky, running from the power that helped them, fleeing from the sorcery they wished did not exist.

**-O-**

They marched all through the dark day and into the night, trailed by shadows and past battles, the promise of blood and pain. Sesshoumaru gave them little time to rest, pushed them to their limits.

By the fading light of the sun a rising mountain appeared on the horizon. The flatlands beneath the pinnacles were sparse and dry, the grass brittle and burnt.

In the shadow of the peaks, Kagome knelt to the earth. Her fingers brushed across the cracked dirt to feel the faint reverberations within. Heat coiled and rose beneath her palm, and although she could not be certain, she thought she could sense the fire burning within the earth and strata, deep within the belly of the summit.

The ground shifted in understanding, whisked news of their arrival to the tips of the highest peaks. And deep inside the domain, recognition dawned.

"Someone knows we're here," Kagome announced lightly.

The edge of a silk sleeve brushed against her arm and Sesshoumaru made an indistinct, disapproving sound low in his throat.

"Then," he started smoothly, an undercurrent of steel in his tone, "it would be prudent to make their acquaintance."

Miles behind them, a backdrop to their silhouettes, lightning flashed a crackling warning across the heavens.

"It would seem more sensible to avoid than to confront, but what do I know?"

Though she couldn't see his face she was sure his brow rose doubtfully. Even so, he laughed lowly, a smile in the uncharacteristic sound.

"I thought I had cured you of your fears, Kagome."

His words drew her eyes and she studied his profile. "You did," she replied, though her voice wavered under duress.

He shrugged easily as he angled himself away from her, poised to walk away. "Doubts begin fears. Do not forget what you are capable of."

His words were strong, curt. For a wavering second he looked at her as a capable comrade and nothing more. But then, as if he could not restrain himself a second more, a hand rose, and fingers brushed along the column of her throat. He followed the movement with his eyes, eyes that softened for her and her alone, passed his thumb over her chin and lips and cheek and when he smiled at her his teeth bore menacingly.

She had nothing to dread so long as he was near. He would cut and kill and swipe down all the horrors that reached for her. His caress reminded her of his words, painted them upon her skin. The glint of his teeth made promises he could keep.

_Do not fear._

And then his hand was back where it belonged, fastened to steel instead of the vice she had become. He turned and walked away from her. Pulled in his wake, incapable and unwilling to rebel, she followed, as he knew she would.

Walking past the others she tried to give them courage, to summon some in her smile. But when she passed Sota she slowed. Serenity was replaced with the edges of deep, fragmented emotion, darkened and unnerving. So strange was his look that she stopped before him and reached, hand braced against his arm.

Black eyes narrowed upon the mountain, and he drew in air with a calm too measured to be genuine. Lost, caught up in an intangible thing she could not see, he turned his face away, as if in shame.

"I will lead," he announced to the quiet.

He left her standing alone, and drifted away a silent shadow, alone in the forgotten past.

**-O-**

The trail he led them on was perilous and rocky, almost as dangerous as the snowy passes upon the Roof of the World. The paths were made more of fissured mountain rock and erosion than straight, sure cut routes. More than once they dropped to their knees or stomachs to slither through cracks and breaks in boulders and mountain walls.

"Is it just me," Kagome asked Aeron when the pathway widened enough to walk side by side, "or does it seem like Sota knows exactly where he is going?"

The mage grunted an unintelligible answer and squeezed through a crack nearly too small for his frame. The journey was more difficult for him, the tallest of their party.

"He spent the better part of his life in the mountains. He probably knows how to maneuver us through the passes without getting us stuck somewhere really, really inconvenient. I don't know about you, but I sure don't fancy getting into a skirmish here. We would _really_ be between a rock and a hard place."

Before she could press the issue, she looked upward see that Sesshoumaru and Sota had drawn to a stop. Before them, the tapering pathway in between the craggy mountain walls had widened into an expansive basin and the intermittent rock roof to their trail opened to reveal the midnight sky.

Sensing her approach, Sesshoumaru motioned for her to stay where she was. In front of the warrior, Sota paused, seeming to scout the area before them. His cloak lifted as a breath of air swirled around the large boulders and outcroppings rising toward the firmament above.

One step out into the depression of the mountain and his sword was drawn. Another and his shoulder was hunched, loosening the clasps about the shield strapped to his back. He negotiated the perilous footfalls, the hidden snags and crevices of the floor. Disappearing around a boulder he materialized a moment later, shrouded in moonlight.

For tense minutes they stood at the ready, preparing for an enemy they could neither sense nor see. It was only when Sota walked back into the open, looking slightly puzzled but unharmed, that they relaxed.

The blacksmith shrugged imperceptibly and sheathed his sword once more. He gestured for them to come out of the pass. Relieved to be free from the confining landmass, they trickled out of the narrow trail. Aeron stretched happily and Kagome couldn't help but smile wistfully at his long limbs. He caught her grin and scowled, apparently not as amused as she.

A large hand settled against her shoulder and Sesshoumaru's voice was in her ear. "Wait for us to return."

There was a snap of silk and the brief, blinding flash of the rosary and Sesshoumaru and Inuyasha were gone, melting into the dark to scout the path ahead. Kagome watched them go, apprehension immediately beginning to gnaw through her flimsy composure.

Long minutes passed and Kagome paced, biting her lip until it bled. The sooner they came back, the sooner they could find the jewel. The sooner they found the jewel, the sooner they could slip out from underneath their enemy's grasp. And the sooner they escaped, the sooner Kagome could drag Sesshoumaru into the relative private of a moment and…

Well, there were many of things she would have liked to do. And not all were entirely appropriate. Caught up in slightly immodest and distracting imagery, she absently scrutinized the cavernous pockets of rock, watching as the light shifted. It was mesmerizing, the stark difference between ebony and silver, so much so that Kagome could not take her eyes from the basin walls and the strange patterns drawn by ethereal hands.

There was movement against stone, the sound of sliding rock. A glimmer of light winked in the unlit crevices. The darkness shifted, and too late, Kagome realized she was staring into enemy eyes. A cold twining sensation rolled down her body and she opened her mouth to scream.

The blacksmith shifted slightly, his back stiffening.

"_Sota_!"

There was a flurry of movement, a scuffle and a shout.

Her warning cry hadn't mattered; Sota's sword was already drawn and catching the weapon aimed at his once turned back. The blacksmith darted sideways, parried another blow.

Again, her hand went to her side, groped for a weapon she no longer possessed. Wildly, she looked up, desperate to assist but helpless to do so.

Two blades collided and recoiled, met and retreated. Blue light billowed outward and Aeron stepped forward, staff bright with power. Sota caught sight of the mage and threw out his hand. He couldn't spare breath to speak, but his dark eyes commanded a halt just before he was pushed back behind a wall of rock.

The clang of swords echoed throughout the basin, amplified by the natural curve of land. The two men danced in and out of light and shadow, each blow met with a counterstrike, a block, an elegant step.

The battle was as graceful as it was wild. Pushed backward, the enemy forced Suzu and Aeron apart, and the two mages scattered from the midst of the melee.

Kagome shrank back, threw her arms before her face as she felt the air slice, a blade pass too close to her unprotected head. Peeking out from behind her fingers she saw Sota catch a hard strike across the buckler tied to his back. He bared his teeth against the pain. One shoulder slipped forward and the shield loosened from its hold. In a second, the barrier was between the blacksmith and his enemy, catching the swipes his sword could not.

"Kagome, move!" Sota shouted.

He blocked a wild blow that might have taken off one of her limbs, and she moved, ducking low. Free from danger, she spun, still watching the fight. Inching backward, she felt a whisper across her mind and not a moment later, she felt Sesshoumaru's presence at her back.

"Are you going to do something?" she whispered, distraught, not daring to remove her eyes from Sota's steady defense.

"No," Sesshoumaru leveled mildly, "not yet."

Disturbed by his response, she whirled to demand action. Before her mouth opened, strong, firm fingers grasped her chin, forced her to watch the scene.

"Watch," he murmured into her ear, his voice mellow and sure.

In the paradoxical dark and light the battle was virtually beautiful.

Sota moved with a grace surpassed only by Sesshoumaru. Never before had she seen a mortal man move so artfully. His technique was careful and precise, like one of his weapons. Even with the scant seconds he had to adjust his defense, he thought through each movement, calculated each breath.

The shadowy adversary was faster than Sota, but it seemed that the blacksmith knew the swordsman's every move. Their flurried arcs and impressive jabs seemed to melt into one, a bizarre and deadly dance. The Forger's son stumbled on the uneven ground and fell heavily against a rising rock formation. He tossed his shield away and spun as his attacker's blade shattered the place he had fallen against.

"Do you see?" the warlord wondered against her skin, "Do you see how they move? They are nearly identical."

Yes, they were. But did it really matter when Sota was about to be sliced in half?

Apparently, Sesshoumaru stored more faith in the blacksmith's abilities than she did, for he remained unmoved, watching like a bored spectator.

Their blows were becoming more violent. She could hear their heavy breath above the scuffling sound of boots across sand. The blacksmith stumbled again; fell against the vertical body of a boulder. He raised his sword, caught the downswing of the enemy blade. Pressed nearly body to body they grappled against the other's strength. Sota's blade jarred, wrenched, pulled free of his grasp.

"_Chris_t-" Aeron gripped the staff tighter, raised it to attack.

"_Shit_-" Inuyasha tugged the rosary, started to pull the last loop over his head

The weapon clattered across the hard earth, tumbled end over end. Kagome tensed and felt lips brush her ear as she watched the deadly winking sword snake under Sota's throat.

"I think we have been had, Kagome. Destiny seems to have the advantage once more."

"_What_?"

He didn't answer. Probably because he was watching as the blacksmith pressed a hidden dagger against the abdomen of his opponent. The two men, still locked, glared at each other over the sword digging into Sota's flesh.

There was an intake of air, like a cruel, cynical laugh, and then the shadowy antagonist broke the silence with his grating, gravely voice.

"I see you are not a complete waste of your father's talent."

Kagome's limbs went weak again. Sota, however, seemed to take the insult- and the mention of his father- in stride.

"Thank you. I am sure he would think the same of you."

As if it caused them great pain, the opponents slowly lowered their weapons and eased away from one another. They kept their blades out as they circled, eyes still drawn on each other.

"Were you waltzing through my mountain or were you here for a specific purpose?" Kagome narrowed her eyes on the shifting darkness and thought she caught a gaze staring back.

Sota strapped his knife back inside his cloak and rolled his shoulders before responding. "We have business here."

"Oh?" the tone rose in haughty disdain. "Looking for quality forging on the northern isle? Only those from the old world know of me. You must have spoken with one of your father's old allies… or enemies. Tell me, son of the Forger, what you seek within my domain."

Sota slid his gaze to Sesshoumaru as he bent to retrieve his shield.

The warlord had already eased away from Kagome, stepping forward to partially block her view.

"Show me who you are."

The ice in Sesshoumaru's tone spread a chill across her skin. From the corner of her eye she saw Suzu's hands twitch, awaiting a signal to cast the spell laced at her fingertips.

Kagome waited on edge, expecting the stranger's sword to reappear. Instead, when he finally moved his hand, it was to his left arm where the loose sleeve of his kimono billowed in the light breeze. Fingers grasped at fabric and pulled upward. Heedlessly, as if he had no reason to fear the great warrior before him, the man stepped forward and into a patch of light.

He was shorter than Sota, but only just. In a set and grim face, two dark eyes glared impressively, full of fire and malice. It was impossible to tell his age. He was bald, without any distinguishing facial features. Except for the confident, cruel smirk hidden in the corner of his mouth, his face was schooled.

Kagome's wary gaze drifted to the arm he displayed. Around his wrist, and up the inside of his forearm, was a black pattern. In the dark it was difficult to make out the curving lines, but when she sought Sota's downcast face for an answer, her memory jarred harshly.

Fire. The licking flames of forges, an anvil, an apprentice.

Like the indelible streaks across Sesshoumaru's wrists, back, and face, so too was this man marked. But he was not born with his insignia. His was earned.

Sota had divulged one of his father's last secrets to Sesshoumaru, once upon a time on top of the cold mountain. Long before he had been born, when his father traveled and hid, he had found a man with great skill and proficiency. A man he had trained to follow his teachings, his powerful ways of forging.

On the peaks, the son of a dead man had given them their first clue, their first step toward the end. It hadn't been Miroku's declaration that Kagome was a mythic weapon. The first strands of fate hadn't been a wood kami's need for one specific mage. Destiny had always been about the jewel, the history, the way they were all tied together, the men who formed an unbreakable bond and threw a demon into death.

Because, really, that's what it all came down to. The Forger, The Mage, and The Warlord. The decisions they had made. The promises they had given to a silent unknowing world. The way those sacrifices played out now, twining life into a twisted, bittersweet mess.

Kagome's eyes sought Sota's. He seemed broken, weary, as he readjusted his shield to his back, kept his gaze away from the man his father had prepared in all his secret ways. Catching her eyes upon him, he inconspicuously pulled back the long, dark arm of his cloak, the sleeves of the kimono within. Underneath the leather armguard he wore was the same dark pattern, a tattoo of flames.

Sesshoumaru was right; fate had played them once again. It was no wonder that the two blacksmiths were indistinguishable from one another. They were trained by the same man, the very same soldier who forged the weapon hanging at Sesshoumaru's hip.

The fires, the forges, and the secrets of the flame, the Jewel, the sword, and every twining path they had crossed, all caught up on one another, all converging in ways unseen.

Kagome laughed, because it seemed the only appropriate thing to do, and drew the eyes of the people scattered in the dark. Most disconcerting was the scrutiny of the stranger. His attention flickered from her face to her chest where both the gem and the Bell and Vajra had fallen free of her shirt.

"You're the Forger's apprentice." She stated sharply, if only to remove his eyes from where they were glued.

The man seemed mildly surprised to hear her speak. "I am."

"What is your name?" Sota asked, still hanging back.

The flashing smirk returned and the man turned to regard the younger blacksmith over his shoulder. "You may call me Ishi-sama, Forger's son."

"How do you know who I am?"

The man called Ishi averted his eyes and contrived to appear bored. "You look like him. Your magic is like his. I spent many years with your father; I remember very well what he was like. For a minute I believed he was back on my mountain, but alas… no. You are a diluted version of his power and capability and although are not a complete waste of your father's talent… you lack much of his training. Did he believe you a lost cause?"

"He died when I was young."

"How unfortunate. I suppose you will never reach my level of mastery. A pity his son cannot carry on his lineage. At least his skills are preserved with me. Perhaps you should call me 'Master' then, as it seems more fitting of your station."

Surprisingly, it was not Sota who took offense to the barbed slight, but Inuyasha.

"Hey! We didn't come here to fight you or listen to your insults. Either get out of our way or draw your sword. We don't have any time to waste."

Ishi studied Inuyasha disinterestedly. "Yes. There is sorcery that chases you." His black perusal slipped to Kagome's chest once more. "You draw pests, woman, with the power you cannot wield."

"You're presumptuous," Kagome parried coldly. "I don't wield it. It has a mind of its own and I'll be damned before I tell it what to do. I carry it to prevent it from falling into the hands of the depraved devils who track us."

"I'm sure an empty scabbard does much to protect the weapon you claim to defend." He scrutinized her, as if to determine her worth. "You speak very freely. Who deemed you important enough for such a task? Who are you really?"

Kagome's face darkened with visible contempt as she attempted to check her temper. "I've just told you. I protect the jewel. My name is Kagome Higurashi."

Even with the dark shadows obscuring most of his face, Kagome could _feel_ his incredulous disbelief. She also imagined she heard his eyebrows shoot into his nonexistent hairline.

"Higurashi? You don't look Japanese."

There was a derisive little laugh and almost in unison, Aeron and Inuyasha muttered, "She isn't," which sounded slightly odd as they both announced it in their native tongues.

"Interesting," Ishi murmured and took a step forward. "Who would have thought such power would wind up in the hands of a some outsider bitch? I see why our ancestors weep in their graves." He maneuvered a few feet closer, bending slightly at the waist to be at her eye level.

Inuyasha flexed his claws threateningly and hissed, "Careful forger, jealousy is not a trait worn well."

Ishi ignored him.

"I agree, Inuyasha," Kagome murmured innocently. "Generally speaking, when a man is all talk… he's compensating for something." Her eyes drifted pointedly to the apex of his legs.

It probably wasn't one of the wiser things she'd ever said. Especially given that he could slice her head off without breaking a sweat. But it had been a long time since her temper had been good and riled, and she almost welcomed the chance to mouth off.

She felt safe enough though, with several warriors surrounding her, each capable of taking down the man who currently looked as if he really would swipe her head off her shoulders.

The malicious humor had drained from the Ishi's face. His hand flew to the hilt of his weapon, preparing to teach her impertinent mouth a lesson. He had only taken two steps when Sesshoumaru drew his nameless sword and the man walked right into the glinting blade. He teetered, and when he swallowed, his Adams apple pressed against the dangerous horizontal edge.

Despite the threat, the warlord remained still, calm, and carefree, his gaze centered somewhere in the distance. He did not speak, but his words were unnecessary. His sword negotiated far better than language ever could.

The forger eyed the black and red blade before raising his hands.

"Apologies, Sesshoumaru-sama, you will have to forgive my ways. I was born and bred in a time when women knew their place."

Sesshoumaru rumbled imperiously, "Their place is the same as it ever was-" dangerous golden eyes slid to meet Ishi's, "above you."

The man eased back, taking careful, measured steps away. When he dropped his hands he bowed differentially. When he looked up from his irreverent incline, Kagome caught the challenge in his eyes.

Straightening, he announced gruffly, " You're enemies are closing in. I am sure you will pass through my realm whether I permitted it or not. For the sake of time and my own safety, I will lead you to wherever your destination is. Consider it a boon for my old master." He nodded toward the sword in Sesshoumaru's hand. "I am sure he would consider it repayment for all he taught me."

He flicked another incensed glimpse at Kagome and turned on his heel, melted into the shadows of his domain.

An inaudible sigh of relief echoed out as the companions slowly lowered their raised weapons.

"Jesus Christ," Aeron exhaled loudly, "that was a sexist if ever I met one." Everyone turned and stared blankly at the tall mage. "What? He was."

Inuyasha shook his head and rolled his eyes before confusion quickly replaced exasperation. "Since when do you speak Japanese? Did you understand that whole conversation?"

Aeron nestled his staff in the crook of his elbow and filed behind Inuyasha as they began to weave their way around the obstructions within the valley. "Suzu, like her mother, is talented with languages," he informed haughtily. "She writes talisman that interpret and decipher words so I can understand. They're like a simplified version of Kagome's Bell and Vajra. They wear off after awhile, but in the midst of battle or unannounced verbal sparring sessions with enemies we don't foresee… they come in handy."

"I imagine," Inuyasha responded dryly, before turning to Kagome and nudging her with his elbow. "You ok?"

"Yeah," she nodded absently, watching Sesshoumaru's back, "I'm fine. I just don't like that man."

"That makes two of us."

"Inuyasha," Sesshoumaru interrupted before his brother could rant, "behind me. Suzu and Aeron to the rear. Sota, with Kagome." He turned slightly and eyed the Protector carefully, "Until it is absolutely necessary you will remain by someone's side. No wandering. No accidents. I do not care if the jewel will be swallowed by the earth itself, do not stray until the last. And do try not to insult anyone else. You will garner us more unwanted altercations." Although there was appreciative, dark humor in his tone, she only nodded, mouth suddenly too dry to speak.

A shift of shadow and he was gone, picking up the trail Ishi forged.

Inuyasha reached out and chucked the underside of her face. "Keep your chin up."

And before he could see Kagome smile her gratitude, he followed his sibling and drifted into the night.

As restless as they were, apprehension and unanswered questions were a troublesome mix, and it wasn't long before Aeron spoke out behind them.

"I find it terribly convenient that the Shikon Jewel is in the same place this forger is. Especially given that your father once handled the gem and fought beside Sesshoumaru and, oh! Yes! He also forged that godforsaken piece of metal that we all staked our lives for."

"Fate," Suzu intoned gently, "is not a simple thing. It makes more sense that everything is intertwined than separated."

"So," the lanky man addressed Sota testily, using the end of his staff as an anchor against the uneven rocks, " you didn't know this was his mountain? This _apparently_ infamous forger taught under your father?"

"I had hoped it was not," Sota answered honestly. "There are many mountains in the north I did not think we would stumble upon his. But Suzu is right. Fate or coincidence has threaded the past and the present together and for whatever reason we are here amongst the mystery."

There was a sadness in his tone that made Kagome pause.

"Are you alright?" she queried lowly.

He sent her a soft, melancholy smile. "Not really. It is difficult to be near the man whom my father entrusted with his greatest secrets."

Softy she asked, "You aren't like your father, are you, Sota?"

Regret was heavy in his words. "No. He was strong and powerful and unstoppable. But he was not always honorable." He gestured vaguely, as if to expel the ghosts that plagued him, "He was human and there are some of his faults that I cannot forgive."

"Giving his dangerous secrets to a dangerous man?"

"That is one mistake he made, yes. Giving them away at all, another."

Ponderously, her eyes traveled to the moon above. "If he hadn't we might not be here today."

"I know. And think, if he had not, perhaps we never would have left the places we began."

Maybe, Kagome mulled, _maybe_. But fate was a persistent thing. It did not like to be thwarted. She was of the belief that somehow, someway, they would have been bound to their quest regardless of the decisions made before they were born.

"I don't think it's always such a hardship, Sota, this stupid odyssey we are on. There are some things we would never have gained without it."

He was quiet for a long time, and just when she thought he would not answer her, he said, "No, it is not always a hardship. Not always."

Moonlight broke darkness and Kagome caught the fleeting smile upon his face, a gesture that obliterated a lifetime of regret and pain. And somehow, without his admittance, she knew that Sota would have come back down the mountain even if offered another choice.

Maybe he knew it, too, and that was why he continued on through the dark, and trailed behind a man who had gained a part of his father he would never know.

**-O-**

Dawn broke as they found the place they were meant to be. The first streaks of morning color danced across the lightening sky. Stars winked out beneath the dissipating thunderheads. And underneath the heavens, Kagome wavered like a ghost, lost in the call of the beckoning jewel. Poised on the edge of a fractured landscape, they studied the deep fissures that crisscrossed over an immense ravine hallowed within the earth.

There was no mistaking the gem' voice now. It burrowed into her heart and tugged her forward. She was listless and restless, pulled toward the unearthly power.

The sorcery of their enemies was growing stronger, too. It was clawing its steady way over the mountain. Shivering, she looked up and toward Sesshoumaru, standing above her, tracing the landscape for hidden spells and dangerous footfalls.

The jewel was down inside the branching clefts. She was reasonably sure that if they could get within the narrow passages, she would happen right upon it. The only real problem was navigating the winding, twisting, claustrophobic pathways.

And the only real difficulty in that… was attempting it on her own.

"She knows her way?" Ishi asked sardonically, his voice easily portraying his distaste for the woman who so easily insulted his masculinity.

Kagome grit her teeth and told herself that, _no_, it would do no one any good to shove him off the cliff edge. Or would it do everyone good? She considered it for a moment, and it was only Suzu's response that saved the unsuspecting man from plummeting to his death.

Suzu responded breezily, " She knows her way. Perhaps better than you."

Kagome grinned and the sorceress sent her a veiled wink.

Ishi eyed Suzu contemptuously before addressing the males. "Your enemies amass. Although my distaste for your… _companion-_" Amazing, he could make a simple word sound so derogatory- "is great, I too dislike the idea of the jewel falling into the hands of _these_ adversaries.

" I am adept at forging because I am tied to the land, and subsequently the fire beneath. I will aid you as best I can." Scornfully, he added, "I can feel them crawling up my mountainside, tainting it with their vile, debasing presence. Find the item and find it fast, I want you out of my domain before this sacred place is destroyed."

There was a heavy thump of wood against rock and Aeron stepped beside the form of the duplicitous forger. "We have no qualms with that. I don't believe any of us want to stay in your presence any longer than necessary."

"You may be a capable mage, but I wager I could run you through with my sword before you had a chance to utter a word."

"Maybe," Aeron admitted, "but it's lucky we have two mages, one who happens to be quite an adept warrior as well. I'm sure you'll be happy to hear she's a woman, and very capable of defending her poor, incapable lover." Suzu smiled pleasantly at Ishi and patted her hand to her katana. Aeron continued on blithely, "Unless you wish to make good on your threats, forger, I suggest you shut your mouth."

Sometimes Kagome really did love his derisive streak.

A clawed hand descended before her eyes and she blinked her vision into focus before accepting Sesshoumaru's hand. He pulled her a few feet away from the others and studied her face intently.

"Ready?'

She inhaled slowly, willed her heart to calm, and met his eyes.

"Yes."

He nodded to the others, snaked a hand around her waist and stepped off the edge of the cliff.

The air rushed around them as they plummeted. The sun broke over the tips of the mountain peaks, glanced off with golden radiance. Shadows obliterated, were swept to only the most secret corners.

Sesshoumaru hit the craggy mass of rocks, bent his knees, jumped forward, and dropped again. Kagome tipped her head backward and caught sight of Inuyasha, leaping from rock to rock, nothing more than a flash of black and white.

Gold dazzled and Aeron dissipated in a cloud of blue curling smoke. There was a bloom of power from Suzu's hands. When the sorcery dissipated Suzu was at the bottom of the cliff, twining her fingers together to transport Sota, still at the top of the ridge. Rock and earth shifted, broke apart. Ishi manipulated the strata, created a stairway of crumbling mud and stone, dropped to the floor of the valley with graceful ease.

Sesshoumaru landed lightly and ran, calling out an order as the others gathered on the basin floor.

"Barrier. Suzu, with me," and raced toward the ruptured lines in the land.

The mage pivoted and followed after the warlord, quickly sheathing her weapons and bending low to skim across the land. Nestled against Sesshoumaru's side, Kagome turned and caught sight of Aeron's magic rising and twining with the rock wall growing up and out of the landscape. Azure rose high and closed off, nestling them within a magical bubble. Inuyasha drew his sword, and then Sesshoumaru jumped, twisted, and they were falling down into the cracks of the earth, skimming past sharp spikes of rock and granite.

Suzu fell in after them, curling into herself to avoid the tight walls of the cavernous place. They landed fifteen feet down and Sesshoumaru set Kagome on her feet. He struggled for a moment before turning sideways. His broad shoulders could hardly fit between the dividing rock barriers. A free hand reached back and Kagome automatically slipped her fingers within his.

Sunlight was drifting against the lips of the cracks above, lengthening the shadows along the walls. The rim of the rifts seemed to glow, but Kagome wondered if that wasn't someone's magic, strengthening the very core of the land.

The firm grip on her hand pulled her through the narrow, twisting paths. Sesshoumaru only stopped to help her over the obstacles she could not negotiate on her own. Suzu remained a shadow behind them, face dark and determined, magic brightening the tips of her fingers.

The walls of the cavern hummed like a welcoming call from the jewel. They were so close. Maybe she could get to it before their enemies descended, maybe-

The earth rocked as an explosion sounded far above. Stumbling against the wall, Sesshoumaru held her head to his chest, protecting her from falling debris. Another rumble, more savage than the first. Dust and rock fell upon them like rain. They huddled to the floor and waited, listening to the crumbling landscape.

"Suzu," Sesshoumaru called above the noise, "can you tell how many?"

The woman's hands were braced between the walls, magic threading into the dark earth to prevent it from collapsing. Silently, she shook her head. "I cannot tell. There is too much magic on the air."

"Men or monsters?"

She frowned, peered up and into the faint hints of sunlight. She hesitated only a moment before answering. "Men- yes. I believe they are human." Her eyes returned to the warrior and deep inside her dark depths, something angry stirred.

Sesshoumaru drew in a laughing breath. "Your god forsaken father was right." He stood and the land shifted, his superior balance keeping Kagome from careening into the rocks.

Struggling, Suzu followed after him, still pressing her hands against the fortified rocks on either side of them.

"Your father warned me that the demon was not to be our only obstacle in this quest. It appears he was right."

"Wait," Kagome cut in hoarsely, coughing as she tried to expel dust from her lungs, "what are you talking about?"

The warlord glanced down at her before wedging her through a tight crack. He followed behind her, and then reached and tugged Suzu out. The woman paused and glanced up toward the blue sky, barely visible between the fine slits of rock earth.

"The Hunters," she whispered expressionlessly, "it's the Hunters."

"They're back?" Kagome gasped, recalling all the horrible stories Sesshoumaru had told her about the sorcerers.

No one answered.

From above and behind, sorcery was approaching at a dangerous pace. They had hardly made it another ten feet when the air inside the tunnel-like walls went still. A shadow blocked out the light above them and Kagome and Sesshoumaru looked up simultaneously. Peering down between the crack, an unknown face regarded them, and then, without warning, the rock above exploded in a dark cloud of angry sorcery.

"Suzu, take her!"

Kagome was shoved forward just as the earth avalanched down upon them. Suzu's hand curled into the material across her shoulder and dragged her away from the sorcery forcing its way into the earth.

When she looked back to catch a final glimpse of Sesshoumaru, she saw nothing but oozing darkness, his ivory form seeped in black. Their eyes met over the miserable, shadowy sorcery, and then she was yanked around another corner, pulled away from impending doom.

And the mage and the Protector could do nothing more but run.

**-O-**

Aeron counted ten shadows, backlit by the sun.

They remained unmoving, watching the four men at the bottom of the cliff, covered and protected by the blue arc of magic he had called forth. An earth rock wall extended partway around the huge dome, added protection from a man who so unwillingly led them into his lands.

The staff in the mage's hand grew warm with churning spells, perhaps a manifestation of his adrenaline, the itch to reign destruction down on the opposition. He was keenly aware of the thin, rustling O-Fudas inside his robes. Although it was only his imagination, he thought they felt like leaden weights, and wondered if they were the reason he couldn't breathe.

"Ah," next to him, Sota's soft undertone drew his attention.

"What? What is it?" Aeron's dark eyes shifted across each of the figures, looking for signs of movement.

The blacksmith stepped forward and a large hand reached up to cover his eyes against the glare of the rising sun. "Our mysterious visitors reveal themselves."

"Oh?" the mage hummed back petulantly.

"Do you see their weapons?"

Aeron squinted and caught the flash of light at each figure's hip. From the distance he stood, down at the bottom of the ravine, he could only guess them to be swords.

"Yes."

Sota shouldered his shield, readjusted his grip on his blade. "They are known for their weapons. They signify the clan they have built. A family without blood ties or marriages, a kingdom built upon destruction and stolen power." His wrist twisted and his sword flashed a challenge. "They believe they are Japan's greatest, and represent our homeland as such."

"The sword," Inuyasha stated off and to the left, his own blade dexterously thrown upwards to land hilt first back in his hand. He shot Aeron a wicked grin, exposing the points of his fangs, "for valor."

Ishi knelt in the dirt, hands drawing alien characters and symbols. "The jewels for benevolence."

"And the mirror for wisdom," Sota finished quietly. "The three symbols of our country, stolen and warped for their use. Each carries an identical blade so that all may know their alliance."

Aeron, thinking this was stupid, opinioned so. "That's nonsensical. Surely in a world of magic and power it would be better to blend in than stand out."

"It is," Inuyasha assured him, crouching a little as he prepared for the immanent attack. "But they do not exist to hide. They exist to steal what is not rightfully theirs."

"The Hunters."

A curtain of rage boiled under Aeron's calm exterior. Memories from the Mage drifted across his conscious mind, the death of his wife, his son, the tricks used against Suzu, all the pain she had been caused. They had torn her family apart, had hunted Inuyasha, had tracked Sesshoumaru to the ends of the earth.

And now they were here, back to finish what they had started.

"Yes," Sota's voice, filled with loathing, echoed up the cliff to reach enemy ears. "The Hunters."

Like they had been waiting to be acknowledged, a ripple of awareness passed through the sorcerers above.

And with a single lunge it began.

One figure leapt off the edge, reared back an arm and fist, gathered emerald sorcery as it fell. Aeron's fingers wrapped more securely around the staff, prepared for the pulsing, shattering power that would lace across his magical barrier.

Time slowed. The fist met the obstruction, and light blazed. Beneath the magical wall, the mage stumbled against the shockwaves rippling across his spell, channeling into the earth. He sank to a knee and raised his staff in both hands. His muscles knotted as he strained to keep the incantation alive.

Working feverishly before him, Ishi continued to drag his fingers in the dirt, his wall of rock steadily climbing around the shape of Aeron's cracking magic. Sand and earth knit together, unfolded over the blue sky. A second shock wave splintered across the shield, eradicated the earthen mold.

"I can't hold it very long unless you want me to pass out," Aeron yelled hoarsely.

"Then let go," Ishi retorted sharply.

Sweat dripped down his face and into his eyes. The muscles in his hands began to tear, his skin wept blood.

The air in the valley fell silent, hushed, waited, and then an enemy sword drove deep into the physical incantation and ripped the ancient words from Aeron's mouth. Rock and indigo sorcery melted into the air as red fire descended from above. Sota raised his shield against the heated attack; Inuyasha dragged Aeron behind a freestanding boulder before the cloudy wave of flames erupted.

Unaffected in the midst of the licking conflagration, Ishi watched the cliff face, an expression of boredom drawn across his brow. His arms rose, brought both hands together, and a deafening clap thundered across the barren floor, snuffing the blaze and sending smoke high into the air.

Ah, Aeron thought, befuddled, a forger tied to the earth and the flames.

But his admiration, however, was fleeting. The Hunters were appearing through the smoldering air, swords drawn, hands burning with a sorcery repressed for centuries. A whisper of wind and shadow streaked by, Inuyasha cuffed Aeron hard- his own twisted way of saying good luck- before he took off after the enemy and left Aeron to his job.

With an air of long-suffering, the mage heaved himself to his feet, reached within his robes, and thumbed through his magical options. Bracing his back against the boulder he withdrew one leaf of paper, held it before his face and muttered the incantations fluttering through his mind. He threw the paper forward, wrenched the stave backward, and then in one impressive swing, caught the edge of the spells with the dangling, golden rings. The paper crackled, and like a door had been thrown open, the ink brushed upon the parchment exploded into a ball of hissing lightning.

As smoke on their battlefield lifted, Aeron looked up to find himself before a woman swathed in black. Their eyes met and his spell erupted outwards, plunging into the earth to up heave in electrical fury. A perfect circle of earth crumbled to dust as shattered rock fragments detonated into the air.

In the aftermath, the ground still sparked with current. Aeron stepped forward unhurriedly, his eyes looking everywhere at once. Across the rocky basin Sota raised his shield against the fiery magic of another sorcerer. Ishi manipulated the land beneath them, catching the feet of the adversaries unlucky enough to counter his attacks.

"You form seals with your right hand?" a voice called out.

Leisurely, he turned. Just outside his ring of destruction the sorceress crouched low to the ground, panting, her clothing singed and smoky.

Oh, _good_, his aim hadn't been too far off.

He shrugged carelessly to mask the tensing of his muscles, the whirl of his mind as he sought another spell. "Does it matter?"

Black eyes narrowed on the hand holding his staff.

"I want to know which of your hands you'll miss the most."

"Preferably none, but if you really want to cut off my appendage you'll have to beat me first."

A sword rose, flashed ruby and crimson. He lowered himself defensively, azure already coloring the smoky air around him. The woman rushed forward, he braced for her attack.

And Aeron didn't sense the cursed dagger sinking into the back of his right hand until it went clean through.

**-O-**

"You know," Kagome gasped desperately as she vaulted over a pile of rocky debris, "your children are going to be adorable. I know that's probably incredibly audacious of me to say, but, I think it's true. Left here!"

Suzu threw a shaky grin over her shoulder, broke to her left and slithered through a tapered pass. "No, no," she affirmed, equally breathless and just as deftly hiding the quiver of anxiety in her voice, "I agree. I think a girl and a boy would suit us fine. What do you think?"

"Really?" Kagome asked, mildly astonished, "You've already discussed children? That's- that's great," she finished, barely able to disguise her astonishment. Her shoulder collided with a jutting point of wall and she clenched her teeth, forced a cry of agony back down her throat. "A boy and a girl. They can hang all over Aeron's legs."

"I thought so as well." Suzu slid to a stop and almost fell back into a careening Kagome. Their path had met a dead end.

Suzu swallowed hard as she eyed the wall, thinking fast. They both knew she could blast her way through it, but what if she needed her strength later? Kagome bent at the waist, afraid she would be sick with the fear gripping her middle, and let Suzu decide what to do.

"We have to climb. You first." Lacing her hands together, she stooped at the knees and pushed Kagome's foot upwards so the woman could grab the rocks above.

Over her grunts of effort, Suzu continued, "Perhaps it's a little too soon to discuss such matters, but I always believed there was no time like the present! Especially given our unfortunate ability to find trouble."

"Trouble finds us, Suzu. We have absolutely no choice in the matter," Kagome retorted bleakly.

Sharp lines of earth cut into her palms as she ascended. Her legs scrabbled against the loose dirt and she fought not to topple into the mage beneath her. "And, anyway, I think planning ahead is good. When all this is through you won't look at each other and wonder whom the other person is. I've heard hazardous situations breed relationships that don't often work. It's probably best to be honest about everything."

"Oh, I agree." Suzu's shoulder nudged the underside of Kagome's thigh, pushed her up and out of the rift.

Kagome scrambled up and found flat land again. They were nearer to the surface of the valley but still beneath the uppermost earthen floor. Dropping to her knees she leaned over the edge of the crumbling path and snaked her fingers around the other woman's wrists. Their combined effort brought Suzu upright and onto safe ground.

Behind them, through the twisting maze of caverns, sorcery echoed and thundered, raced along the walls and up and out into the sunlight.

"Well, like I said," Kagome picked up their thread of conversation as they began to run again, throwing fearful glances over their shoulders as they did, "they'll be cute kids. And Aeron will be a good father. He'll be at a loss a lot of the time, but he'll manage to get everything right anyhow."

"Yes. It will suit him better than sorcery. He tries, but he's not really fit to be a mage."

Kagome laughed and clutched her side; fought back the tears that bubbled underneath deceptively light words. They had both felt the extreme power of their enemies, heard Aeron's barrier shatter and break. What was left but to lie and pretend everything was alright?

Suzu's face was ashen. It was only an extreme sense of duty that kept her by Kagome's side and away from the stand-in-mage fighting to keep them safe.

"Wait!" Suzu hissed suddenly, her hand snaking out to grab at the back of Kagome's shirt.

A looming presence stifled the air behind them. Above, rock broke and cracked, as heavy shadows descended onto their path. Reeling backwards, Kagome and Suzu collided and crashed into one another.

There was a second of chaos and darkness wrapped around the trail. Suzu muttered violently beneath her breath. Her power rose immediately, washing the two women with pale light. Recovering on the ground, Kagome felt the warrior lunge over her shoulder, her katana scraping the edges of her scabbard as she did.

When the glow of sorcery trickled into Kagome's eyes she gasped. Not inches from her nose, the face of an enemy loomed.

Dark, stringy hair accentuated the ashen hue of the man's gaunt visage. His edges were smudged with manipulated shadows, the dark he had called to confuse them.

Suzu's blade was lodged deep in his shoulder, and when he opened his mouth to speak, black blood spilled from between cracked lips. Horrified, Kagome clawed at the earth. Scrabbling backward she ran right into Suzu who struggled to remain upright and keep her grip on the shaking katana.

"Kagome, go. Go before he casts a spell." When Kagome hesitated, Suzu shoved her, "Sesshoumaru is coming! Run. Go now!"

Falling over her limbs she managed to squeeze into a crack in the wall. Ahead, the fissures widened and daylight broke through.

And there, just ahead, the jewel sang a song to her soul.

Suzu yelled behind her, the cry thundering in Kagome's ears. Guilt almost halted her steps, but the rise of Sesshoumaru's power reassured and kept her moving.

Scraping her abused back against more exposed fragments of rock, she sidled her way out of the crevice and reached open space. The walls of the earth still rose high above, but the spaces between them had grown considerably. Stealing her nerve, ignoring the sounds of strife echoing along the canyon, she darted around the curving path.

The sandy floor led to a hole in the thick rock walls, a little cave carved into the mountainside. Time too short to despair the dark, she threw herself headlong into the grotto. With her hands as guides, she felt her way through the pitch black.

An eclipse chink of light split the dark in half. Golden sunlight trickled down to shine white along the walls of the cavern and onto a granite column rising in the middle of the floor.

And upon it, sitting idle and nonchalant was the second winking piece of the Shikon jewel.

Kagome sprinted towards it. She slipped a little as she came to a clumsy stop, hands flying to grip the sides of the pillar to keep her balance. Sucking air through her nose she eyed the fragment critically. When it proceeded to shine tauntingly, she reached a wary hand and poked at it before snapping her fingers back and out of harms way.

A light breeze swept through the cave. It whispered questioningly in her hair, as if it were confused by her hesitation.

Kagome gasped in sudden, ferocious anger and pointed a shaking finger toward the unassuming thing. "You! You stupid, ridiculous shard of a gem! All the trials and tribulations we go through and you're _sitting here unprotected_- No defenses, no spells! Anyone could waltz in and pick you up! At least your other half was _in_ a _fucking_ tree laced with a _fucking_ hurricane!"

Though the gem sat still in the bright sunlight, the silence around her seemed to turn slightly guilty.

Muttering furiously and groping blindly within her shirt, Kagome extracted the little glass vial and unscrewed the cap. Her hand shook as she snatched the glowing jewel off the smooth pedestal and deposited it in with its counterpart.

Like two magnets drawn together, the halves sprang together and, despite her merciless anger, Kagome grinned, triumphant. She didn't know how the others were faring, but this had been much easier than sparring with a wind demoness.

The two halves purred contentedly, meshing and melding like lovers after a long and arduous separation. Combined with the jaunty lilt of the windy power, the newer portion added a sense of undeniable strength and certainty. The sweet tones on the air seemed to reverberate with the echoes of the land and blend effortlessly with the knowledge of the earth.

She held the jar up and peered at the weapon within.

It was quiet, not at all like the communicative wind. Even so, she could sense its voice, deep and indomitable, like the mountain upon which it sat. It had seen the earth shift and change, watched the centuries crawl by.

Its power came from its history and the ability to discern.

Enlightened beyond all other things, it crawled to the back of her mind, curled up and thread out, burrowed into her skull.

_Wisdom_, the earth resounded under and around her, in the tiny bottle within her hand.

"Oh, I see," her words rustled softly on a smug and superior breeze.

_And now you are needed again, Protector_.

A soft smile passed over her face as she lifted her hand, drifted the tips of her fingers over the rock pillar. "Thank you."

Satisfied, the earthy voice murmured lowly, and fell asleep behind her eyes.

Kagome turned, fled, and emerged once more into the lies of sunshine, hope hanging damningly around her neck.

**-O-**

Aeron sank to his knees as agony crawled up his arm. Panicked eyes stared at the black knife buried in his hand. The slender fingers on his shoulder gripped like a vice. He watched, terror stricken, as the woman's other hand slipped away from the hilt of the weapon incapacitating him.

The blade had sliced right through the middle of his hand. He wondered dizzily if his skin was made of paper, the edge of silver had cut so clean. He tried to flex his fingers around the throbbing affliction and nearly fainted when he saw the blade had embedded into the wooden staff.

His hand was _pinned_ under the cursed, blackened knife. Around the intruding mass his bones creaked, snapped, some were shattered, rendering his appendage useless.

A soft snicker dragged his eyes away from the crimson dripping down his wrist and to the gleeful face of the sorceress. She stepped out from behind him, one hand idly waving at the smoke billowing about the air. Ten feet in front of them her identical version dissipated as easily as the fumes.

She bent low and examined the damage inflicted upon his hand. Seeing his distress, a smug, spiteful smile drew across her mouth. Stepping backward she calmly patted the sword at her waist. Hanging from the hilt, attached by a flowing red ribbon was the small circular mirror Inuyasha and Sota had referenced. It swung lazily, flashing light across Aeron's pallid face.

"Mirror," she informed apathetically. "I am skilled with the use of images. Especially my own." Disdainful eyes fell once more to his grievous injury, "Silly man, tricked by a specter. Most would have seen through it."

A spasm shot through Aeron's hand. He groaned, pain white hot along his bones, slithering through his blood.

The sorceress leaned back, wiped her hands along her ebony cloak. Half turned, eyeing her allies as they battled Sota, Inuyasha, and Ishi, she said absently, "I had expected more from the warlord and his supporters."

Aeron could do little more than force air through his clenched teeth. A grating groan of pain wailed beneath his gasps, and somewhere under the torment his ego suffered a terrible blow.

The sorceress remained unaffected by his pain. For long, stretched seconds she regarded the melee surrounding them, keen eyes studying the arcs of sorcery as they warred. And then, just when he dropped forward and braced his uninjured hand to the bloodstained earth, she turned back around.

Slender, deadly hands reached and cold hard realization hit him harder than the knife through his hand.

"I will make good use of your powers, magician."

He recoiled, shuffled backwards over the ground as quickly as he was able what with his hand restrained and useless as it was.

Multi-toned, echoing of the man who had died, he rasped, "You will not take this staff from my hands."

Black eyes narrowed, a hand flew to her sword. His free arm curled backward, gathered midnight in his palm. Metal winked in the morning light and flew for his heart. Aeron lunged sideways and forward, and enraged, the power of the Mage overflowed from his fingertips.

Sickly smooth, slash and spear. The blade sliced through the skin of his shoulder, met bone and broke through. A rattling breath escaped him, and he was surprised when he felt nothing but exhaustion.

He stared at the perfect lines of the sword only inches under his face. A trickle of blood oozed around where the blade met the dark hues of his robe. One fine drop formed, fell, splashed the earth with color.

His left hand contracted, and when his eyes caught up with his mind, he followed the curve of his impaled arm to where his fingers had neatly curled around the throat of the enemy. The sorcery from within his soul burned sapphire around her pale features and dark hair.

Detached, he examined the lifeless face of the woman in his deadly grip. Curling, twining streaks of sorcery drifted from her throat to her open mouth, threaded inside, wept out of her eyes like tears.

One more tiny inhalation of air, a throb of her heart and she was dead.

She had suffocated on a borrowed soul.

Disgusted, but mercifully thankful for the unconscious killer within him, Aeron's grip slackened and her body dropped like a weight.

She left her sword in his shoulder.

He stared down at her lifeless form, feeling oddly fuzzy and removed. He hadn't known he could dispatch life like that. Had he ever killed before? He couldn't remember. His legs swayed as they began to give way beneath him.

When he fell, just a few feet from the dead body, his dark eyes stared up at the pinnacle of blue above. Lying on his back, studying the morning clouds and peaks of mountain, he realized he'd probably never be an accountant again.

After all, he didn't know many mathematicians who could use a calculator with a cursed and/or paralyzed hand.

Ah, well.

It was probably for the best though. He had never really wanted to return to life before.

What a bother though. His hand really _hurt_. As if to agree, the trapped appendage sent another wave of pain down his arm.

He didn't know much about curses or magic or knives or the human body, but he was quite certain he would not recover easily from this wound. He sighed painfully as minute movement disrupted the sword lodged under his clavicle and through the muscles at his back.

Maybe after this Suzu would let him stay at home with their yet to be born children.

Yes, that sounded nice. They could climb all over his legs. And he would be much more helpful child rearing than accidentally getting stabbed in the hand.

With a small smile on his face he closed his eyes, drifted off into daydreams about the way life would be _after_, and waited until Suzu fell to her knees beside him and ripped the sword and knife from skin.

**-O-**

Her limbs were going to give out. Exhausted, Kagome crumpled against the rocks and held a hand to her side. She had made it back into the narrow passes, but with the jewel safely stowed against her chest, all of her adrenaline promptly found somewhere else to be.

She wiped at the sweat and dirt across her face and brow, trying to gain control over panting breath. She was still consciously aware of enemy magic. The presence of others tickled along her spine and moistened her palms. All was quiet except for the echoing sounds of creaking, cracking rock. If she strained, she thought she could hear the distant clash of warring power, but it was more likely a product of fear than superior hearing.

The echoing sound of footsteps on crumbling stone had her shrinking into the relative dark of the pathway. Holding her breath Kagome peered out of her hideaway, watching a parallel trail through a crack in the wall. A shadow moved and she froze, resisting the overwhelming urge to run. A tall figure passed after the shadow, black cloak rustling gently against stone.

"I know you are there, little one. I can feel you through the jumbling rock and stone!"

The adversary paused and soulless eyes swept up, down, sideways and behind. Not more than five feet in front of her, separated by nothing but earth and strata, the Hunter listened, apparently unable to detect her.

That was unexpected. And welcomed.

Kagome chanced a look down at the shining jewel. Earth and rock murmured quietly, adeptly disguising her presence, holding her within its great and unstoppable hands.

She silently sent her appreciation and steeled fraying nerves, waiting for the dark adversary to move on. With an angry jerk he vaulted forward and out of sight.

The moment the sound of his steps disappeared, she ducked out of her crevice and hurtled down the pathway. Slithering through the cracks of the land seemed much easier now, and it wasn't until she noticed the warmth of the jewel against her chest that she realized.

Just like the wind had several times before, the earth was offering its aid, making the pathway minutely wider, enough so that she could pass without twisting and turning or slowing down to crawl under or over obstacles. Stifling the joyous laugh that rose warmly in her chest, Kagome reached for the bottle and brought it to her lips.

"Thank you, thank you," she breathed, "oh, thank you."

It might have said something in return, hummed happily at the gratitude, communicated through the earthen walls or what little wind reached down in the cracks, but at that exact moment, as Kagome rounded a sharp corner and found the first fissure they had fallen into, a band of iron snaked around her chest, hauled her off her feet.

Her scream met the hard hand suddenly clamped across her mouth. She struggled, clawed uselessly at the forearm snaked between her breasts. Fingers tightened a warning and she was all but dragged under the overhang of the rising cliff walls.

After a moment of panic, she went still, washed with sudden relief.

She _knew_ those conceited fingers.

Turning slightly she looked up into Sesshoumaru's face.

He looked marginally displeased. But then, she probably would have too if someone had tried to elbow her in the gut.

The hand that had splayed across her stomach was suddenly down her shirt, fishing impatiently. Kagome was about to have a minor conniption when he snagged what he had been looking for. Dragging the entwined necklaces out of her clothes, he held the baubles up before both their eyes.

As he took in the partially completed jewel she felt him smile against the curve of her face. The clutch on her mouth loosened fractionally. Dropping the silver chains back where they belonged he held one finger up to his mouth, requested absolute quiet. She nodded her understanding.

"I see this section of the jewel has its advantages as well. It was very difficult finding you, cloaked as you are with the power of the earth," he muttered, and Kagome couldn't decide if he was upset or admiring.

Footsteps approached. The Hunter had circled back around.

Kagome searched the relative dark beside them and a worried frown drew down the corners of her mouth. Sensing her distress, he murmured in her ear, "I sent her to aid the others. Be still while I deal with our nuisance."

The enemy appeared with sickening ease, appearing out of the shadows against rock. His dark eyes swept over the place Sesshoumaru and Kagome hid within, and for a heartbeat, he stared. She stiffened, afraid that the magic of the jewel did not extend to hide the warrior. It was only the large hand upon her shoulder that stilled the panicked movement she might have made.

When the enemy turned and ran, the warlord slipped away. She peeked around the rock corner in time to see the sorcerer turn, Sesshoumaru's hand rise, and his claws pulse with light. Too late, the Hunter's shadows converged to fight off his attacker.

Streaks of black shadows exploded as Sesshoumaru's fist sliced clean through the man's belly. Darkness scattered, spells cracked, fell to the ground like blood. Rivers of black swamped Kagome's shoes.

Emerald eyes went hazy. With sudden force her vision of the scene shifted and it was no longer Sesshoumaru and the nightmarish Hunter she stared at. Surrounded by mist and the shadows of faceless ghosts, she watched the vespers swirl, felt the cold chill of eternal winter.

Lunge, twist, and slice.

Eyes fell downward, stared numbly at the blade through her middle. It had come out her back to drip blood to the ground. Shaking hands rose, and somewhere far, far away Kagome was screaming.

But all she felt in the nightmarish vision was a sense of displacement and heartbreaking mystification.

This was what it all came to? A violent and painful end?

She grasped the hilt to pull out the blade so neatly killing her.

But her knees had already hit the ground. Every night in her dreams, on her knees, bleeding, cut in half, dead before she even realized. Ad just like in her nightmares, behind her, someone called her name.

But it was always too late.

Wide eyes blinked and refocused. Plummeting back to the present, her hand flew to her mouth as Sesshoumaru assisted the enemy's descent to the earth. The warrior leaned over the dying man and spoke in frightening tones.

"Who sent you?"

Laughter molded with the leaking blood, sounded sickly and saturated.

Around the hand still submerged in the man's stomach, Sesshoumaru's healing powers flared. "I will keep you alive if you do not speak. Who sent you? Who rules you now?"

The crimson tinged mirth twisted to a cry of pain. "I do not care if you torture me, warlord. I will not tell you our secrets. We both know I cannot."

Sesshoumaru sneered, flexed his claws within the cavity of blood and flesh. Viscera escaped the crater his stomach had been. Kagome had to look away.

"Honor in a Hunter, how utterly contradictory."

"No. It is only the truth." He inhaled sharply, or tried to. There wasn't much left of his middle. His limbs flailed in pain as fingers feebly tried to gather the spells mingling with his blood.

Healing sorcery welled again, repaired the deathly damage only to tear it away with adept, merciless claws.

Again and again, white sorcery, black blood.

It was only when the Hunter's eyes rolled back into his head and the crimson on the ground had turned the compacted earth to mud that Sesshoumaru's sword flashed. It was only when Kagome gagged that Sesshoumaru ended it.

With one swipe the head was severed.

The Protector rose, flicking his hand to rid his skin of the repugnant stench of death. The edges of his kimono were soaked with blood. Red climbed its way up his legs, over his wrists, to the elbows of his handsome garb.

With great patience he wiped his blade across a swatch of unblemished clothing and watched the gore drip off its end. Kagome blinked stupidly at him, feeling an unexpected sense of foreboding. Shifting uncomfortably, she glanced down at the grime around her ankles. It reminded her too vividly of her dream. Her eyes squeezed shut. She forced herself to take deep, even breaths.

But this only brought the reek of blood further into her nose and mouth.

When she looked back at Sesshoumaru, he was sheathing his sword and turning expectantly toward her. H was watching her with unreadable eyes, face expressionless. Even so, there was calculation within placidity. It seemed he was trying to strip her clothes and skin and all the layers over her heart to pry out whatever had unnerved her.

She thought he might say something; he looked as if he wanted to. There was a an uncertain glint to his scrutiny, and the longer the silence stretched between them, the harder it was for Kagome's mind to forget the images of her envisioned death.

The fear he told her to forget was growing, gradually revealing itself upon her face.

Something was wrong here and she didn't want to explore what it was. The edge of her vision was still grappling for her attention. But she didn't want to give into it, couldn't bear to see her own death again.

She didn't want _him_ to know. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

He broke the moment by extending his clean hand to her. When she took it in her own he pulled her onto his back, settled her before springing up and out of the twining cracks of earth.

They raced back to the cliff bottom.

"How many did you kill?" she asked him, still haunted by the image of his hand in the sorcerer's middle

"Three."

And as grateful as she was, she couldn't find a thing to say to the beast carrying her so carefully in his arms.

By the time they reached the others, the surviving Hunters were gone. They had disappeared as easily as the smoke and fire. Two of the adversaries lay dead upon the ground, but Sesshoumaru only paused to wash his senses over them before bringing her to their companions.

They gathered in a small group around a prone Aeron. There were bloody gashes, smudges of soot, bruises and aching limbs. But no one was as badly hurt as the mage, still bleeding from his wounds.

Shouldering Inuyasha aside, Sesshoumaru stepped up and next to the sorcerer. He was propped against a stone, body limp and unmoving. Suzu worked feverishly over the mage, her power threading through a hole in his hand.

Kneeling, Sesshoumaru addressed Suzu. "What happened?"

Kagome hovered behind the warlord, and had to stifle her gasp when she caught sight of the injuries. Beside her, Inuyasha glowered angrily, a furious fire burning in his eyes. It was difficult to tell if he was upset with himself or the ailing sorcerer. She touched his arm sympathetically and her jerked away to hide the emotion sweeping over his face.

"It was a cursed blade. I'm trying to draw out the malediction. His shoulder wound is clean, I just cannot-" the strength in Suzu's voice wavered. She choked, wiped her face across her shoulder. "I just cannot heal the injuries."

"I will heal him. Finish removing the curse."

Bone, sinew and muscle stitched together, skin closed and mended. When he withdrew there was nothing but a shiny pink scar stretched across Aeron's arm.

Suzu gasped in relief as her spell stuttered to a stop. Gathered in a corporeal, ghostly ball, black vapor turned and twisted. With passionate force, the Mage's daughter smashed her hands together and burned the spell away with her rosy light.

Sesshoumaru repaired what he could of Aeron's hand. The wound was deep and unlike any Kagome had seen before. It looked as if the blade had irreparably damaged his palm and the function of his fingers. Suzu was clutching at the man's robes, desperation clouding her brow and dark eyes.

The light from Sesshoumaru's spell dimmed and died. And then Aeron sighed out painfully, and Suzu kissed him in her joy. The groan of pain and foul-mouthed curse he uttered were the two most liberating sounds Kagome had heard in some time.

Relieved, happy, but suddenly more tired lonely than she had been in a very long time, Kagome drifted away, gathered a moment for herself.

There was a note of finality on the air. The end was coming. It was so close she could almost see it. Another section or two and the gem would be complete. And if they hadn't already, they would seek out the demon, destroy him.

And maybe death would rise to claim them all. Or maybe they would survive and fall into the promises they had made, the hopes they dared not speak but dreamed anyway.

That wasn't asking for much. Just a life to live.

Because the _after_ was going be the real adventure. A brief span of time where the could breathe. Where they could confirm that it had been worth the pain and suffering, the death and destruction.

Where Kagome would pick up just a little where she left off, and kiss away fears.

Someone hovered at her elbow and she looked up. Immediately, she frowned, and all hopeful thoughts fled.

Ishi was watching her impartially.

"Did you get it?" he demanded.

"Yes," she replied scathingly.

Surprised, and making no attempt to hide it, he raised a brow. "I see." He studied her face briefly, before remarking off handedly, "Astonishing." Kagome, tired and frazzled, considered demonstrating the punch Inuyasha had taught her in his spare time, but what the forger said next blew the thought from her mind.

"You remind me of someone, girl."

Anger trickled away, leaving her hollowed. "I've been getting that a lot lately."

"Your party may stay upon the mountain for the night to recuperate and regain strength. I do not believe you will see those enemies again too soon. You can spare a few hours rest," he called over his shoulder as he began to walk away.

Kagome watched his retreating back. An aching question crawled up her throat and forced its way out her mouth.

"Who do I remind you of?"

He didn't answer, but then she didn't expect him to.

History had a funny way of contorting things, making it hard to relive. Maybe even he had demons he could not bare to recall.

She watched him fade into the distance and suddenly wished she could do the same.


	47. The Beginning of the End

_Hiiiii. I'm very tired, and there are probably many glaring mistakes. I promise to fix them, but thought some of you might be impatient to read (?). It's talky, but important to setting up the end and later events. Hope you enjoy it. Sorry it took so long. _

* * *

Please don't lie, don't lie to me

that you're not afraid, my love.

I know you well enough to know

you can't be alone.

-Sea Wolf, _The Cold, the Dark, and the Silence_

**Chapter 47**

**Beginning of the End**

Ishi brought them deeper into the mountain, the place he lived. Although the whole expanse of earth seemed to be his, or so he believed, there was one place carved into the caverns on the western side of one large reaching summit that he inhabited the most.

Winding stairs, sculpted out of the living stone, wound up and around the sides of cliffs. The journey was long and arduous. Exhausted from battle, they traipsed up the mountainside, hugging the wall of rock to prevent missteps and perilous falls. Kagome drifted in Sesshoumaru's vast shadow, throwing worried looks over her shoulder as Inuyasha and Sota hoisted the injured mage along the arduous pathway. Pale and distracted, Suzu brought up the rear, dark eyes watching Aeron, too.

The end of the stairs brought them to a widened rock path and finally, to an open expanse of smoothed mountain earth. The peaks continued on above them, but here there was safety and shelter, respite from treacherous climbs.

Hours after the battle, injuries healed, mental state more or less intact, Kagome collapsed against a cool, craggy wall and watched Sesshoumaru retreat back into the caves where Aeron and Suzu had also disappeared. There was an air of unease wrapped around the others, and the feeling crept into Kagome's bones and clenched her stomach into knots.

The ominous feeling only soared to new heights as Sesshoumaru's gleaming eyes connected with hers before the dark of the caves swallowed him whole. There was a warning in his gaze, a truth that could not be hidden.

They were in grave danger.

The unforeseen attack of new enemies left them injured and vulnerable, and although they had survived, they had lost their anonymity, their chance to win this fight with secrecy.

They were tracked now, hunted like animals.

She stared after the warrior for a long time, wishing ardently that he would reappear, reassure, and put right all that was wrong. But Kagome, although naïve at times, was not stupid, and as she followed the darkness of the mountain with her eyes, she knew, in the very deepest corners of her soul, that comforting words and well meaning lies would not erase the fate that surrounded. It pressed in, oppressive and heavy, as worries and memory replayed over and over within her addled mind.

Mingling with guilt, interlacing with weariness, an utter sense of helplessness battled with her tenuous clasp on bravery. She could still smell the blood of the Hunters in the canyons. She could still taste copper in her mouth. Skin and muscle memory recalled the excruciating numbness of an imagined sword through flesh.

Her insides rebelled against the imagery, and she pushed down the violent need to be sick all over the ground.

Shit, shit, shit. This was all going horribly _wrong_.

Aeron was alive, but he was no longer whole. His pained smiles and weak witticisms only did so much to derail concern. Under his sarcastic barbs he was struggling, grey, sweating out the pain that had fractured his bones and torn his magic asunder.

She had caught a glimpse of his hand, crumpled in and immobile. The fingers that traced magic, that withdrew O-fudas, and righted exploded dojos were forever damaged, never to be quite right again. Sesshoumaru could heal, he could save the world with the edge of his sword, but there were some things he could not salvage, some things that were broken beyond repair.

She could not fully comprehend how badly Aeron's injury had crippled them all, but she had seen the seriousness in Sesshoumaru's eyes, Inuyasha's grim expression.

This was bad and they were running out of time.

Gritting her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut, Kagome fisted her hands in her hair, forced earthy air through her nose, squeezed burning eyes shut. Somewhere on the wind there was rain, a cool breath within the stifling heat of summer.

Against the warm skin of her chest, the tiny gem hung, ridicule personified, a tangible reminder of a history bathed in blood. But even with its gory symbolization she was able to slow her galloping breath, and still the trembling fingers that always followed fear and waning adrenaline.

As she regained calm, slow realizations trickled into the cracks in hardened thought. Numb with awareness, she began to comprehend that this was the last great rest before the battle that would change it all. The moment the sun rose in the morning, they would run. They would run and they would be hunted and it wouldn't end until all their enemies were dead or until they fell under the weight of their duty.

When Kagome opened her eyes again, the sun had changed positions and clouds had gathered across the sky. Her fingers were curled in a protective cage around the jewel, trapping it to her chest. Blinking weary exhaustion from her eyes, she retracted her hand and stared down at the bauble within its glass house.

Another piece or two and it would be whole. And then what? What would fate require of her after?

More than anything, Kagome did not want to contemplate the _after_, the possibility that there would _be no after_. Dying was the unknown void. It made her sick and filled her with questions about purpose and worry of a useless life wasted. And she didn't want to feel those things. She wanted to remain selfish and hide away the visions that foretold a gruesome end.

The distant rumble of thunder tore her eyes away from the sleeping weapon and on unsteady feet she rose, numb, hollow, so vacant and lonely she thought she might drift away on the wind and be forgotten forever.

Moving like a ghost, afraid to mull too long over questions that led to regrets, wishful thinking, and painful realization, Kagome followed the curve of the earth wall and found a bend in the mountainside. There were more stairs leading higher into Ishi's domain. Eyeing them uncertainly, following the trail where it led around the craggy cliffs, her gaze fell upon Inuyasha, a shadow within a shadow, leaning into the dark. Warily, all too aware of how far a fall it was to the earth below, Kagome slowly ascended the stairs.

Because she did not want to be alone, and maybe he didn't either, she sat next to him and looked down upon the world.

Out over the flatlands below, summer storms gathered. Sitting against the sky, they were so tall that she could still see the sun shinning in distant places, a sparkling backlight to the wispy darkness of rain drowning the green land below.

The air was cool, smelled of earth and the renewing promise of water; the thing that washed all sins clean. Next to her, Inuyasha sat unmoved, his thoughts dark enough to blot out the sun, Pain and anger and guilt weighed heavily in his bright eyes. They did not look at one another, only watched the clouds move across the flat plain, marveled at the way the sun still shone through and painted gold along the edges of darkness.

Storms crept closer. The wind gained a chill. Kagome lifted her arm, linked it with his, and laid her dark head upon his shoulder.

"You're sad," she murmured into the reverent quiet, the proclamation so raw and real it hurt for her to speak it.

All the air seemed to leave his body and his muscles tensed.But she didn't care if he was uncomfortable, if addressing sorrow made him vulnerable. Plagued by evocative apparitions of death and ruination, Kagome could not help but feel as if her time were running out, slipping between desperate fingers.

Before it was too late, she needed to nullify the possibility of regret.

Maybe Inuyasha felt the same, and that was why he sighed, and all the fight flew from his bones.

"Yeah," he whispered in a voice she had never heard him use, "I am."

"Me, too," she echoed, clutched his arm a little tighter.

When he spoke again, his words were heavy, lonely. "I think I could have helped Aeron more today. It gets kind of chaotic, you know? And down there, fighting the… fighting _them_-" he had to swallow to clear the past from his voice, "fighting them reminded me of the way it was before."

He fell silent again, collecting painful memories to examine them and relive mistakes.

"They chased me for years. Most of my life I've spent running, or chasing, or shoving my blade through and enemy that just won't let me be. And that's alright," he reassured, "that's alright." His voice dipped into a whisper again, gaze gone far away. "I don't mourn the years I have lost honoring my father's name. I don't care that I had to wander. My only regret is that through no choice of my own I brought destruction on the one person who cared for me above all others." Narration caught on emotion, and he had to breathe in once before he gathered words together again.

"After she- the priestess- was taken away from me the first time, I couldn't hide anymore. They'd ruined something too pure for me to justify lying in the shadows and pretending I wasn't my father's son. I don't mind my duty. In fact, I relish it. It's an odd mix of revenge and willing obligation," he mused poignantly.

There was a moment of quiet, and thunder echoed across the valleys, smooth and reassuring, a grounding force.

"And now she's gone again and all I have left are the only people I believed would never exist."

Kagome's fingers twisted the material of his jacket, and a sharp pain stabbed under her heart. "You never thought you'd see a world where others cared for you despite your lineage?"

"No, I didn't. And now that I'm here I'm scrabbling to keep it whole. I feel guilty," reiterated the loyal, plaintive warrior, "because I don't want anything to happen."

"To us."

He didn't agree, except maybe to breathe out heavily, like he was trying to expel his ties from the unfortunate group he had come to care so deeply for. Kagome thought of the man at her side and the crippled mage, alike in so many ways they could have been accidental brothers. And she lingered on his real brother, the warrior with ironclad honor, with duty so great and burdensome it would take all of eternity to finish.

And there was a man from a cold mountain and hot forges, the powerful daughter of an ancient ally.

And there was Kagome, starting her bittersweet goodbyes, proud of Inuyasha, the brave, wayward, infuriating half-breed.

They were tied together by purpose, history, duty, and maybe even lemon bars. And the aftermath of the looming future threatened to upend all that Inuyasha had come to cherish, all that he had lost before.

"I just wish I could have done something more today," he broke into rough reverie.

She couldn't help the small, knowing smile that peeked out beneath drenched emotion, and tried desperatley for normality, "You did save Aeron last time. You almost died. I think that might be filed under 'ridiculous acts of self sacrifice' and could be counted quite easily toward doing 'something more'."

"He lost use of most of his right hand, Kagome," Inuyasha reminded quietly.

Her smile died.

"I know," she finally returned, serious once more.

"He won't be able to use his sorcery as effectively."

She squeezed his arm gently, tried to encourage him without words. "I know. And so does Aeron. You can't save us all the time. You've done a good job this far. God only knows how many times you've prevented my death. But," she paused, strained, knew he wouldn't want to hear the truth, because he never had before, "there are things we have to do by ourselves."

"But you don't have to die," he admonished strongly, voice breaking sternly, a begging note ringing in her ears.

It was an exaggerated truth, wishful hoping, but beneath his hushed nobility she fell, crestfallen, a broken liar.

Because as she gazed upon the world, instead of the rain and sunshine and the land below, Kagome saw a sword through her stomach, the horrible never-ending truth that haunted her dreams and followed her like a shadow in the day. She saw her own death, and its memory mocked the hopeful, brave man at her side.

She bit her lip, stifled truth. He must have taken her silence for agreement, as if in doing so she promised never to die, never to be injured, to never be torn or broken. Below her fingers and heavy head, Inuyasha relaxed away some of the tension in his frame.

He didn't see the tears shine in verdant eyes, but he caught their scent on the wind, and when he asked her, "Why are you sad, Kagome?" and she didn't answer, he couldn't bring himself to ask again.

So they both ignored the tears wetting his arm, and watched the sun attempting to chase away the clouds.

* * *

It was perfection tempered with depravity. It held all the flawless edges of a master sword, but inside was where it twisted, turned, was something more altogether. It was his greatest work, this steel fashioned with the willing blood of a soul.

The black sword glittered in the dangerous air of the cave.

Plunged into the silt, sand, and loose earth, it called his name.

Entranced, mystified by the object he had made with only his hands and desire for power, he reached for the place the demon had disappeared into. Black residual sorcery had forever stained the earth under the weapon, the place where the creature's body had slowly oozed away.

Totsai did not remember when the last breath of the foul demon had thundered through his cave. He had been absorbed, overcome, possessed by the blade he was making. He had not turned from the hammer and fire for days. And when he had remembered to breathe and turn, when his fragmented, edged mind had collected into a semblance of sanity, he had looked to where the demon lay, and found nothing but black.

His memory was unreliable after that moment. In the parts of his mind that remained lucid he wondered, almost fearfully, where the beast had vanished. But the call of the sword was too great to ignore, and useless thoughts were quickly forgotten. He was destined to finish it. It was his ultimate masterpiece. It owned his very soul. Turning back to the sword, he had picked up the hammer, and fell into the black flames, lost his mind to the void.

It was finished now, but he did not know how it had come to be thrust into the sand, almost lost in the utter domination of blackness scorched against the walls and stone.

Outside the desolate grotto the sun rose and sank, and still Totosai stared at the blade, eyes open to the power within its frame. Whispering vespers danced across his mind, subtle suggestions, beautifying words. Steady now, like a chain with irresolute links, the voice trembled through him, body and soul, bones and skin.

In his contracting pupils, the sword burned its image.

It started as a sliver, a red line like a ribbon. It stabbed him through, threaded him to the soulless thing, the depraved thing, the glorious thing upright in the sand. It was a distorted cadence, a wicked, tangible evil singing him foreword with vague promises of an ultimate future.

Totosai stepped forward, stopped, hesitated.

Accustomed to the iniquity of men, his desperate vie for power, his unquenchable need to be tied to greatness, Totosai had never paused to consider the ramifications of his decisions. Not until the sword had called his name. Not until it simpered, sickly sweet, of capability he could take.

His first step brought him short and for the first time in all his wicked life, the abhorrent, unworthy forger thought to rebel his desires.

The moon came out over the sea, bright, incomprehensible to the sorcery in the cave.

Unwilling, another step. Misgivings turned to fear and two days of desperate want fell to panic. Craving power, spending a lifetime cultivating his insidious practices had never prepared him for this indomitable beast caged within his artistry.

_Come_, it sang to him, _come_.

Three steps in three days. Inside he clawed, ripped and shredded and screamed. Severing the last bit of his sanity, claiming it for its own, the sword plucked at his malleable soul.

His hand fingers closed the distance. His mind screamed to flee.

And the beginning of the end began with a shock.

The metal was cool, almost icy. The forger had expected heat like flames, a hilt that sizzled and melted his flesh. Instead, in the aching quiet, the sword did nothing but adhere to his palm, and astonished, triumphant, Totsai removed his loving creation from the earth.

The blackness of the cave stilled as its most precious piece came away in the arms of a stranger.

Totsai held the gleaming weapon up before his eyes, cackled madly, foolishly, relished in the power growing around him-

And cried out in agonizing pain as the face of the demon, Onigumo, most wretched and despicable of all things, flashed before his eyes and erupted into his very essence to rip at his soul.

He thrashed wildly, tried to dislodge the black hilt from his grasp. It was impossible; it was sewn to him, part of him.

And it was swallowing him whole.

Falling under a cloud of torturous anguish, the forger heard the humorless, echoing laughter of the creature he had armed, the being he had willingly empowered.

And then the forger was lost, no more, forgotten, obliterated.

* * *

It was difficult to tell whether it was night or day. Mist clung to air, drifted up into forever. Kagome turned in a small circle, ran her hands up and down her arms to instill warmth. Her steps echoed mutely. Small sounds filtered in from faraway, but the thickness of the air distorted the distance.

She wanted to call out to someone, but her voice was trapped in a restricted throat. Fear was slow, and grew as she walked alone and lost. A shape moved through the air, disturbed the universe at her elbow. She jerked backward and away, automatically groping for her sword. When she reached nothing but air, she panicked, looked down. Her belt and scabbard were missing.

Vulnerable, frightened, she spun on her heel, ran blindly as she searched for a way _out_. She wanted to call out his name, because she knew he would come if she did, but her mind and mouth were in separate states, disconnected from one another.

There was nowhere to run, not in dreams, not in reality, because fate was an oppressive and unyielding, and it had always and forever dictated each moment, each breath she took.

But why did she have to realize that now, trapped and alone in her own head, waiting for the final second of her demise?

She gasped as a sudden alien pain ripped through her, unstitched her soul from wherever it lodged within.

It was a moment of plaintive honesty, of quiet revelation.

It was simple. One hit, one wrench and she was felled. It was neat and easy, much more than anything she had ever done before. She was _so good_ at fucking things up, so schooled in the art of mistakes and regrets. But she wasn't good enough to avoid this, to accidentally bypass what was to be.

The only one who could was nowhere to be found, and she was helpless, sinking, weeping, regretting, sorry on her knees.

Her voice didn't work; if it had she might have asked, 'Why?'

But last moments before darkness were confined to steel and blood, an identical end to the beginning, as violent and promising as her start.

Mist wafted, curled around her like a mournful friend.

Trembling, she touched the hilt of a faithful, errant weapon, wondered at the numbness that overtook and stole her final thoughts, laced her breath with cold.

So this is what it is to die, to slip away and be forgotten, to end because someone had decided she was no longer necessary.

It was heartbreakingly pathetic that she was so easily dispensable. But it was not unexpected, and that might have been why she let her hands drop to the earth, stared desolate at her blood.

Sagged with defeat, grisly with crimson ambitions and dreams, she watched a single tear fall from the edge of her blurring nose and splash across dim steel.

Green eyes rose to where the sun should have been and met nothing and everything, fell into oblivion. She heard her name, thick, murmured like a prayer, grating with lost hope.

A last breath, a final beat of the heart and Kagome woke up gasping in the darkness of a cave.

Cold tears were splashed across her cheeks, but her eyes were already dry. Terrified, walled in and shut off, Kagome rose and felt her hand along the wall. Inside her head, striping alongside the irrational words and images, were balancing, grounding, saving things.

She had fallen asleep on the cliff edge, her head against Inuyasha's arm. It had been raining, and the sun had still shone. She wasn't dead. She was alive and feeling increasingly sick. There was a moment of clarity, a pause, and the sound of rain against stone settled her flight, dragged her back to earth. On awkward, weak legs she stumbled through the dark, equally frail hands leading a trail to the blue light of nighttime, the scent of rain.

There were shapes in the dark, and in her haste to flee the impounding cavern; she almost kicked Inuyasha and stepped on Sota's head. They must have been exhausted, not to sense her bumbling past them, her barely contained hyperventilating inhalations.

Sanity had returned, but with it came recognition of real fears and flourishing anxiety. She needed out, needed light to counteract the darkness, something hard and sure to prove, once more, that this was real life, that she was not ending by the edge of a sword.

Kagome swept out of the haven and left silence behind. And off in a corner, awoken by the unearthly mist that leaked from her dreams, Aeron watched her fade to black, and tasted death on the air.

* * *

Sesshoumaru framed himself against the dark of the storm and the clashing black of the caves. A few feet before him the rain trickled over cliff overhangs to pool in tiny dips and hollows of mountain rock. He brooded silently, watching the lightening flash across the sky and through the heavy rain clouds over the plains.

Tonight he was weary, vexed. A list of problematic complications had asserted itself in his mind, and no matter how he tried to dislodge them, he could not staunch the grim unease that trickled down his spine and raised his hackles high.

The Hunters were gathering again, if not entirely reformed. That was bad.

Onigumo was somewhere down below with a frightening weapon of his own. That was worse.

Their mage was injured, perhaps even permanently incapacitated. That was horrendously unfortunate.

But, the wind seemed to sigh and the rain might have echoed, there was Kagome, and that was good.

She was still a shortcoming, a limitation.

But whole once more, Sesshoumaru was strong enough for the both of them. And all he had to do now was keep her alive. Alive until the demon was defeated, alive until he vanquished the Hunters once more.

That was the crux of it. Keep her alive. Get off the mountain. Collect the last pieces of the jewels. Kill any Hunter that happened to cross his path. Dispatch the demon. And then worry about the darkness of resurrection, looming tragedy later- and curl around, within, and through Kagome, the escape from all things wicked.

Sesshoumaru was just about to congratulate himself on a sound and solid plan of action when keen ears had picked up the sound of an intruder stealthily invading his important thoughts. Floundering for his bad temper and managing impressively, the warlord turned slightly to the dense caves at his back. Shuffling through the dark with an ease that made Sesshoumaru's eyes narrow and hackles raise- after all, he had never liked being snuck up on- was Ishi.

The forger inclined his head, enough to convey a sort of careless recognition of Sesshoumaru's ability to kill him, and stepped up near the lip of the cave. The water against the stone splashed louder within the stretched silence between them. Seconds grew to minutes, and Sesshoumaru silently pondered which way he would incapacitate the impudent blacksmith if it came to blows.

He was just settling on his options when the man inhaled the night air and said nonchalantly, "I have met the demon that tracks you. Not long ago he passed through my realm."

Stilling, letting this simmer in his mind, it dawned on the warlord that Ishi might be more of a treacherous, traitorous bastard than he gave him credit for.

As the air around the warrior began to hum a warning, the blacksmith continued on, a slight hitch in his cool voice. "He was looking for a forger to craft a blade for him. He needed a sword with very specific, dark powers."

Gold eyes blinked slowly, reflected strangely with rain. "And am I to assume you denied him?"

Ishi's shoulders tensed before rising in a stiffened shrug. "I told him I could craft excellent weapons, but that I made them for my own use and that anything he asked of me would be ignored. If I were to craft him a blade it would no doubt disappoint him, as I have never once believed anyone to know more about what comprises a weapon than I, myself."

Ah, arrogance, his worst trait and perhaps his only saving grace.

A slow, cutting smile stretched across Sesshoumaru's face.

"Onigumo does not deal lightly. You are proficient in your art. Your mentor was one of the greatest weapon makers in all of Japan. The demon wanted your skills to make a blade to rival my own. It was a chance for you to test your skills against your former master's. And if you did refuse, he could have forced you to make it for him."

Again, the man shrugged, and his limbs seemed to sag, his bones lose strength. "I could not make the weapon he requested. I am skilled, but not in sinister arts." Ishi swelled with sudden pride, and added haughtily, "I have eclipsed my former master, and could prove it if I wished. But I do not."

Thunder rumbled, low, like the growl of a caged beast. Ishi's black eyes flashed in the dark and Sesshoumaru met the conceited gaze with even strength.

"Onigumo did not trust me to forge the blade. He believed that if he forced me to construct it, I would taint it in someway. Sabotage." Softly, but determinedly, he declared, "He was right not to trust me."

Sesshoumaru's mocking smile twisted into a sharp, knowing sneer. He was almost inclined to think there was some sense of principle in the man who thought steel, lived for the fires.

"I told him of another forger." He was looking away as he spoke. Sesshoumaru smelled the vague scent of fear. "I owed no one my allegiance, I did not wish to aid him, but I wanted my life."

The silver sound of metal, the recoil of muscles as Sesshoumaru's blade sent its silent warning.

"I can tell you where I sent him, warlord."

Sesshoumaru weighed his weapon in his hand, swung it lazily, adjusted to its weight.

"South," the forger snapped, angrily, though there was a hint of apprehension in the word. "I sent the demon south… to a forger from the old world. Last I heard of him he lived by the sea, on the coast. He was driven insane by his lust for power. He crafted weapons at the height of your power, or so they say. He forged during war, outfitted many enemies."

Sesshoumaru laughed at this, and his bored gaze flicked upward to pin Ishi with an uncompromising glare. "My enemies, forger, or yours? I do not recall that we were ever allied. In fact, I believe the only connection we had, prior to this moment, was that we both knew the Forger. But now," he stepped forward with tortuous purpose, his epic sword rising slowly, "now, we are tied because you have fraternized with my greatest adversary, the beast that threatens to rend the world in two."

The blade tip pressed into the black material of the forger's kimono, just above his heart.

"South," Ishi repeated, firmer now, as if he could authenticate truth with certainty. "South to the sea, the very edge of the land. That is where I sent him. If he has found the man and convinced him to make the blade they will still be there. His wishes were…" he grasped, looked away from the steel tip to his chest, "_extensive_. It would take much time, much power. You could go now and kill him before it is complete."

The blade pressed harder and Ishi wisely snapped his mouth shut. "Thank you," Sesshoumaru seethed, "for your permission to find and kill the malevolent soul who threatens the world in which you live. I am sure I will do just that."

"I did not tell him anything. I know nothing."

"You knew the Forger. The Shikon Jewel was in your domain."

Ishi shook his head enthusiastically. "I did not know it was there. I am tied to the land, yes, but it was hidden from my senses. I do not know how long it was there, only that the land began to shift and change and call out to the world. Even as you approached my mountain, I was not sure where the power came from, nor how to reach it. It was not until your-" His lip curled automatically, disdain hovering on his tongue.

Sesshoumaru cocked his head, inviting an insult, and Ishi swallowed harshly, grimaced, and averted his eyes. "Only when the girl had possession of the Jewel did I sense its power. Only then did it separate itself from the mountain. I did not tell the demon of the gem, I swear it. Even if I had known… I would not have given it up."

"Really?" Sesshoumaru's voice was edged with points and traps, pitfalls for the unfortunate forger to fall within.

"Yes," he practically spat. "I am allied to no one, this is true. But I live for myself; I live for what I believe in. And the land upon which I was born and from which I glean my power is sacred to me. I will not see it violated."

Sesshoumaru advanced until there was but a foot between them, his sword still leveled menacingly against the man's chest.

"For your sake, I hope this is true."

"Would you kill me?"

He snorted and Ishi's expression melted from wary anger into confused surprise. "No, forger," Sesshoumaru assured him, "I would not kill you." He paused and in the ensuing silence, the world turned cold and dark, burned with his authority. His smile turned feral, disappeared under his promise. "I would take your hands."

The man went pale and Sesshoumaru imagined he was envisioning his forge, cold and unused, his life's work thrown away because of cowardice.

"I believe it is a good thing then," the man finally managed, "that I have not sold your secrets, nor betrayed you to your enemy."

"If you have," the warlord leveled icily, a controlled fury coiling in his tone, "know that before his blood is dry on my blade, I will come back and take what is most precious to you."

He might have reiterated his promised threat again, but at that moment, deep in the cave, Kagome woke, bathed in unbridled fear. A torrent moving through the sword that connected him, he was washed over in the violent aftershocks of dreams. There were sorrow and tears on the air, and in a matter of seconds he was near driven mad with rigid displeasure. The sword dropped away from the forger's chest and was swiftly sheathed at his waist.

The demon and the possible treachery of the blacksmith forgotten, Sesshoumaru, disturbed and enthralled, swept passed Ishi, knocking harshly into his shoulder as he did. The man stumbled back into the sharp rock wall and hissed out painfully, but the war king was already far down the cavern passes, moving with increasing purpose.

He did not like when Kagome was upset. It grated against his calm, made his claws search for the source of hurt, rocked his sanity until he wanted nothing more than to sink his teeth into trouble and heartache, kill it, watch it bleed.

The paths inside the winding caves were dark, but pockets of blue light and rain fell through the slits and cracks above. He drifted; deliberately slowing, inhaling the smell of rain and tattered emotion.

Although he itched, was restless to get to her, he waited, halted his steps, strained and listened. She was breathing unevenly, the sound faint, but loud enough to echo off the walls. In each inhalation he heard a desperate gasp for calm, and each exhalation quivered with dark, fraying despair.

He waited for quiet, fingers closed tightly around the sword that connected them, and stepped once more along the path. When he caught sight of her, luminous in the dark, he stopped short at the top of a sloping incline. Shallow breath, pangs of sharp concern, the effect was the same as a sword through his body, she halted him so easily.

The caves opened behind her, and out in the dark the rain fell with heavy intent. The sound echoed into the round grotto, muffled the world, and covered it with the gentle promises of summer. Above, pockets of eroded rock gave way to moonlight, tiny places where mountains could weep tears from the sky.

Her feet were submerged in a natural spring welling up from the ground, her back to him. She turned as she sensed him, and he was given the barest glimpse of one bright green eye. Tiny rivulets of water danced across her face like the tears she tried to wash away. She had discarded her shirt, dirty and bloodied as it was. The material of her white undershirt clung to the damp places of her skin, and deep within, in places hidden and locked and kept under deliberate control- Sesshoumaru awoke and stirred.

They watched one another, alone for the first time since _then_. His eyes drifted, calculating with warmer light, fiercer perception.

She was small. With skin that bled, with bones that broke. But belying the weakness of humanity was that accursed powerful gem, dangling between her breasts.

The power of the Shikon Jewel was undeniable, but not overwhelming. It was a thought, a feeling, nothing like Sesshoumaru's blaring sorcery. It was calm. It was the air, the earth, the trembling of the world. As its power grew, so did its quiet anonymity, its ability to hide in plain sight.

Purposeful appraisal was forgotten as moonlight and rain wrapped around the moment, obliterated thought as painlessly as the sunlight had the morning he had reached across the space between them.

He moved down the incline without a word, without a thought in his head. Closer, closer, whatever had to be done to be near.

He stopped at the edge of the spring and she waited guardedly, watching him with wary indecision. Her dark, sweeping bangs, grown long and unruly, drifted into her eyes. She looked young and wild, chased. He could hear her heart beating over the echo of water dripping onto the earth floor.

His arm rose, fingers uncurled and beckoned her. Kagome's hand, still dripping with water, slipped into his, and he slowly drew her out of the spring. She moved on stiffly and let him propel her with inevitable gravity.

There was a void around her, an ache he could not soothe. Inside, mingled with heady want and numb need he was winding high, unsure and unsteady too, thrown off by her missing pieces.

Standing before him, she stared at his chest, hid from scrutiny. With a downcast face she should have seen his free hand move to her neck, but even so, she started suddenly at the touch. A spark of unbridled discontent lined his brow, called for her attention.

He spread his hand across the hollow of her throat until it spanned the entire column of skin. Fingers caressed gently, felt the frailty within. How easy it would be to kill her, an accidental application of minor strength. She could bleed, could fall, could catch cold in a cave and be gone as suddenly as she had happened.

Claws stroked the silver chains hanging around her neck and followed their journeys down her collarbone to the valley between her breasts. With a vague disinterest, his fingers traced the Bell and Vajra, the glass jar housing the earth's most powerful weapon.

She sighed, and the fingers still interlaced with his squeezed. When he looked up into her face, her eyes had returned from a far odyssey. Green, wretched and true, opened like doors and enveloped him in grief. It was an emotion she had hidden well and rarely showed. But he had seen it before and recognized it flickering within her face.

But those same eyes brimmed with silent pleas, and weakness wrecked him, wracked him.

His palm spread outward, pressed in the gentlest of ways. He could feel her heart leap within her chest, thrum into his fingertips to electrify. Fingers disentangled from hers, unlocked the desperate grip, the pleading hold. A half step forward and warm breath glanced across the exposed skin of his chest, just above the silken folds of his majestic, bloodstained kimono.

He stared down at her, raised his hand to her face and brushed the backs of his knuckles across the soft skin of her cheek. Warmth and want singed his edges. He was blurred, one with the night, a dream. With each brushing caress, the dragging, sorrowful shadows burned from within her eyes, until she returned, bright once more. The open palm against her chest followed its trail back up her body, over her throat and to the strong, determined set of her jaw.

Carefully, mindful of the way she was built, the way she thought and lived, he cradled her face. Cupped within his hands she was dwarfed, and with strength and assurance, he tipped her pale countenance toward his.

Heedful, mindful, deliberately slow, he bent; curved, bowed his proud shoulders met her halfway, and pressed his lips to hers. Emblazoned, better than words, his mouth against hers. Grateful, bowing, the king of a kingdom shirked his duty; let it flutter out of his soul.

A paradox of their first desperate touching, this one was to soothe, to reinstate his promises. He held her face between the fingers that razed kingdoms, and ripped apart the bone and marrow of adversaries. Brief and mindful, aching kiss. Long and slow and sweeter than it should have been, this wordless declaration of faith.

Because now he could defend her with a sword and chase away nightmares with desire, because he was absolute and there was no fixing this mistake.

Long, fingers molded to the curve of her nape, that beautiful neck that was once strangled in the demon's grasp. And then his hands were spreading wide across her back, tucking her into the surrendering curve of his body.

She was safe there like she was nowhere else in the world.

Lithe hands danced across his chest, just above his heart.

His thumb traced a dark eyebrow, smoothed along the bridge of her nose.

A kiss to the curling dark hair at her temple, a command, "Do not fear the dark and dreams."

She whispered her first and only words of the azure painted night.

"Ok."

The scent of misery drifted away on the rain.

He broke his lips from warm skin, dragged her head to his chest, and ran claws through her hair.

Tomorrow they would move again; tomorrow she would be in danger. Tomorrow she could die, tomorrow she could lose a piece of herself and he might never gain her back.

Tomorrow the sun would rise and Sesshoumaru's shadow would stretch far behind him and she would follow him to hell and back.

And perhaps that had been her nightmare, the horrors she had yet to see. Or perhaps she feared the unknown of the sunlit day.

And maybe, the treacherous and violent parts of his soul intoned, maybe she feared her own death as much as he.

His hands longed, his fingers trapped, she melted to him, and he kept her there, head against his heart.

And together, they tried to stitch pieces that fit so well it hurt.

* * *

The second time Kagome awoke, with a little start and a hand pressed to her throat, it was morning. The fading edges dreams were tinged with sunlight and promises, gentle words and caresses, a contradiction to the dark nightmare that woke her hours before. But the strange, relaxing peace-encompassing sleep evaporated as she realized she was alone in the dim sleeping cavern.

She rose quickly, as memory from the previous day surged and had adrenaline coursing through her tired limbs. A threadbare blanket slipped off her shoulders and she shivered, surprised that instead of summer heat, the air held a distinct chill. The sound of metal grating against rock surprised her, and she looked down to her waist. Her formally empty belt and scabbard now held Sesshoumaru's ancestral sword. The added weight around her hips was welcome and her unconscious worries about being defenseless slowly ebbed. Gently, lovingly, she traced a hand along the edge of Daichi-sama's hilt.

Apparently she wasn't the only one worried about her future. Maybe Sesshoumaru was more anxious than he let on. Maybe he was afraid for her too.

That was both reassuring and terrorizing.

But maybe this was as close as he would get to her when everything went to hell.

Sour and sleep addled, she tried not to feel cranky about having to save the world, but it was too much to ask of her so early in the cold morning. She shivered again, disliking the foreboding cold, and her eyes crossed the grey cavern to search for the morning light.

It was as she stood, stiffly and with a little groan, that she saw the cool, heavy mist welling across the opening of the cavern and across the dirty floor.

Her heart jumped and fear froze her limbs.

The air carried the smell of damp earth and grass.

Like her nightmare, like that lonely place she went in her dreams.

Controlling the rate of breathing became difficult. Gathering her things together was near impossible. With numb necessity, she slipped on her shirt and pack and flicked a discerning gaze to the low, moisture filled clouds.

_Shit_, she didn't want to die today. Not today. It couldn't be today. It had to be a coincidence. Sesshoumaru was there, not too far from the cavern. He wouldn't let her die. Surely not, not after everything.

Maybe her nightmare was only that, a terrible dream bred from anxiety and horrendous circumstances. Maybe, possibly.

With wavering resolve, she squared her shoulders and started forward.

This, Kagome opinioned bitterly, was a horrible way to wake up. This, she decided, was a terrible cosmic joke to play on someone who was only trying to do her job to _save the entire world_.

Fighting rising nausea, Kagome slipped out of the cave and into the fog.

The cold air hit her skin and stole away her breath. She stumbled; nearly fell to the hard rock. She had to swallow several times before her voice worked. "Hello?" she called and the dense air immediately swallowed the sound. Rock shifted and cracked, echoed hauntingly.

No one answered her. She resisted the urge to stamp her foot and offset rational fear. Well, great. This was marginally terrifying and everyone had abandoned her. Slightly hysterical, Kagome hoped they would all happy with themselves if a sword did in fact become lodged in her gut.

Summoning her courage, she began to call out again only to stop short as the sound of footsteps echoed, painfully loud along rock and mountain.

The air swirled impressively and Ishi broke through the low-lying clouds. He halted instantly upon seeing her, head snapping upward. He looked as surprised as she felt.

Tense seconds ticked by. Kagome's gaze sidled from his dark expression to the sword at his side.

"Your companions are readying for the trip down the mountain," he informed her crossly.

"I see," she responded, equally stiff, gazing past his shoulder where the faint outline of a trail could be seen. She thought she heard Inuyasha's voice, muffled by the distance. Something in her loosened infinitesimally, and though she hardly dared to trust it, she thought maybe- oh, please- that this was not the moment of her end.

The forger moved forward to brush past her and she was unable to help the stiffening of her limbs, the fear and adrenaline that coursed through her veins. The man paused at her side; so close his kimono sleeve brushed against her bare arm.

"It does not suit you."

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and shivers raced across her skin, even so, beneath his condescending gaze her chin lifted.

"_What_ does not suit me?"

"The sword." There was a faint touch at her hip, a curious, discerning finger, and Kagome spun, furious, animalistic, and ready to claw and bite and scream to survive.

"Don't touch me," she snarled, drawing the blade in a single, smooth arc.

Ishi's lip curled as distaste flitted through kindling eyes. "You are too clumsy for the sword." The penetrating gaze sidled down her body once more before he sidestepped and muttered off-handedly, "The bow and arrow would suit you better. Long distance, less chance for possible missteps and blunders. Less possibility for impalement. Though there are positions other than sword maiden and archer that would _also_ suit you."

"And what might those be?" she leveled menacingly to his retreating back. She gripped the sword so hard her arm shook.

"Positions?" he queried innocently, gazing at her over his shoulder as mist distorted his form. Seeing the determined clench of her jaw, the forger smiled. "The best position for you, girl, is on your hands and knees."

Instantly heat rose to her face and her insides washed out with a cool rage. Fear was replaced with rising, blackened fury. If she hadn't known that he could easily kill her- might in fact run her through and drive her to her knees- she would have run _him_ through his back.

Instead, she settled for yelling, "An interesting thought from a man with an empty space between his legs!" and was satisfied when his wicked grin disappeared into a glower.

His hands clenched into white knuckled fists. Momentary panic returned, and she wondered if he would turn around and dispatch of her. But then he snorted and moved forward into the darkness of the caves, leaving Kagome alone on the rocky, misty path.

Disturbed and disgusted, though infinitely relieved that she was not about to die in the name of feminism, Kagome relaxed, though her eyes remained glued to the spot he had stood. It took a few long seconds and forceful quelling of nerves and rage before she was calm enough to turn and continue toward the others.

But as she prepared to move, she felt the familiar sweep of her spine, the kindling of awareness in some distant part of her brain. She was so accustomed to his presence that she hardly noticed the shifting in the world when he approached. It was innate, the tie between them, grown stronger and more intangible since the full return of his power.

She pivoted slowly to see Sesshoumaru, standing frozen on the path, the heavy, white air swirling around him like extensions of his soul. He almost disappeared in the grey color, his silver hair blowing gently in the breeze, his kimono touched by tendrils of dancing mists.

He was so handsome it was painful, made her heart ache.

He _had_ to be greater than a man. He had to be _more_. Steel wrapped beauty could only exist in a foreign creature.

His hair had grown since that first day she ran into him, groomed and mysterious in a marble hallway. It was past his shoulders now and she imagined that was the way he had looked _then_-

When he stood on hillsides and gleamed with his father's armor and power. When he was a commander and ruled lands and men by the edge of a sword.

She wondered if he had ever expected to find his weakness in an inconsequential human girl. If, in fleeting nightmares he had wondered if someone- not an enemy or adversary- existed to break him, to unhinge all his plans.

Staring at him in the morning and the mist, batting away nightmares that insisted death, Kagome hated to think how greatly she had wounded him, how debilitated he would be when they were through.

What if she _was_ fated to die? What of him?

Was it arrogant to think that her absence would end him, would finish the unstoppable warlord before Onigumo could?

Kagome's eyes slid closed as a painful grimace tore at her visage. Admitting truth, especially when it revealed her shortcomings and downfalls, had never been a skill she possessed. So she buried her nightmare, the vision that tore at her strength and faith and courage.

She felt the brush of Sesshoumaru's sleeve at her side, the disturbance of air right before his fingers wrapped around her elbow to steady and ground her.

Kagome opened her eyes, met the warlord's own, and in the absence of sunlight, on the shadow of the mountain, desolation began to erode carefully preserved hope.

."We're in trouble aren't we?" she whispered softly, hoping that the world wouldn't hear.

"Why do you think that?"

"It's true isn't it?" she snapped, a little harsher than she meant to sound. She cast him an apologetic look, but he seemed unfazed, ever cool and confident.

He regarded her silently and one hand rose to brush a lock of hair off her shoulder. She shivered against the faint touch, the chilled air and mist.

"Why do you think so?" he repeated, voice too steady to assuage her fears.

Kagome crossed her arms and looked away from him, characteristically worrying her lip between her teeth. "Just a feeling," she murmured guardedly, stifling the lancing image of her own death.

"A feeling from the nightmare that awoke you?"

Ah. So she hadn't imagined their midnight rendezvous. Or the tears that he brushed away. Or the press of his lips against her own.

A warm heat crept beneath her cheeks, but she refused to look at him. He would see the lies in her eyes.

"No," she answered steadily, and because she felt guilty, knew he could smell deception, added, "maybe." His strong fingers reached for her chin and brought her face back around. There was already blood welling liberally between raw lips and white teeth. "I can see we're in trouble. I can see it in your eyes," she admitted softly.

Untroubled by revelation, the warrior parted her lips, rubbed the calloused pad of his thumb across her skin. It came away red. He brought it to his mouth, licked it away, and returned it to her lips.

Her breath hitched sharply, was instantly giddy, desiring, trying to hold onto the importance of this serious moment.

"We're in trouble," she reiterated thickly, swallowing hard around the lump of instinctual emotion pleading for his acknowledgement.

The thumb continued to stroke the small streaks of crimson off her mouth. "There have been worse casualties, more horrendous circumstances."

She had to grasp his wrist and tug his distracting fingers away. "Aeron's hand, The Hunters, Onigumo's sword. _It's bad_."

"Yes."

"Are we going to make it?"

The glint in his eyes turned hard and sharp, and he was the king of a kingdom once more. "You doubt me?"

She laughed ironically and dropped his wrist. "No." He studied her, and she could feel him sifting through her unease to uncover the truth. She sucked in cold air through her teeth, had to ask because it was terribly, vitally important, "If something were to happen- if I were in danger would you prevent me from completing the jewel?"

Instantaneous and innate, he answered, "Yes. _Should_ I prevent you from your unfortunate duty?"

It was a dangerous question, one Kagome could not answer honestly, nor afford to. She was not meant to run away, her destiny was not to hide.

But Sesshoumaru was the only one who could up heave fate for his own desires.

Maybe, she thought, feeling sick and dizzy, maybe the world ender was not Onigumo, maybe that title was waiting to rest on Sesshoumaru's shoulders. Maybe he would be the one to prevent the inevitable from happening, and in the process end the world as they knew it.

Kagome tightened the belt and scabbard at her waist, briefly allowed her fingertips to trace the hilt of Daichi-sama before meeting his unnerving gaze.

"No. You don't need to stop me; you don't need to save me. Not today."

Sesshoumaru reached, glided the safe backs of his knuckles across her cheek.

"Then I will not keep you from your task. Not," he assured, "today."

And his free hand cradled her own, tugged her away from the darker shadows, and she followed behind- and within- his own.

* * *

Ishi escorted them down the mountain, but Kagome had trouble believing it was due to good manners and more so he could assure himself they were leaving. He made sure to keep ahead of them, but not so far that he wasn't within hearing distance. She thought she observed his head cocked back in their direction for the duration of the trip downward.

It was a waste of energy on the blacksmith's part. They were entirely silent, except for the few choice curses Aeron and Inuyasha snarled whenever the weakened mage stumbled.

Near the base of the mountain, the strange, intolerant forger halted and pointed out the trail they were to take. As he slid past their silent shapes he sent Kagome one more curious and disapproving look before disappearing into the rocky earth, almost as if he had never been with them.

Kagome stared, thinking hard, wishing she had more time, if only to go find him and kick him in the shins for being absolutely infuriating and chauvinistic.

A hand settled on her shoulder and it was Suzu, smiling gently, summoning up reassurance for the woman bowed beneath the weight of duty.

"Which way?" the sorceress asked quietly, pity and understanding clouding her dark gaze.

Kagome fiddled with the glass bottle and the answer was spoken before it crossed her mind.

"South."

They left the mountain and its memories, and Kagome dragged her lies with a heavy heart.

* * *

There once was a man. And that man wandered, searched for the purpose of everything.

There was more, he knew, than the ineffectual weakness of humanity. He bled when cut. He screamed when his bones shattered. He had seen his years begin to etch across his skin and knew one day he would be buried under the earth.

There had to be more, then, an opposite of weakness. And so he wandered, and so he searched.

When he heard of the clan, a movement of humans with extraordinary sorcery, he crossed the continent, waded through lakes, nearly lost his fingers to the cold of a mountain, and when he found more he embraced the doctrine of the predator.

With each prey he caught and captured, sucked the very soul from, he became greater, stronger, faster, closer to endless, nearer to immortal.

But drive for power had not dulled his brilliance. He had stayed in the shadows, was a mysterious cog within the wheels of motion, a shrouded individual climbing the power structure within the world of sorcerers. And time turned and against all odds he survived, steadily gaining the necromancy he had dreamed of.

He watched wars rip the land asunder. Experienced the rippling effects of the greatest battle between two war hungry kings who would fall short of glory, and be forgotten once the dust of battlefields swept clear. He listened to the tales that wove in the aftermath of history turning over, and still he waited, shrouded.

In the lull between warring states he tracked, trailed, was the guiding force behind the hunt for the errant warlord.

In the decades after his clan was ripped apart, he hid and survived.

In the trembling moment when power began to reawaken, the Hunter returned to the gathering sorcerers, his brothers and sisters.

In the years following the birth of a trivial, black haired, green-eyed girl, the resurgence of a lost sword, the reappearance of a broken gem, the return of a demon, he waited with enduring patience.

And when the demon king traveled to the sea, poured out his depravity to make metal edges, he finally slipped from the anonymous shadows and followed the evil soul across the land.

After centuries, he pulled the strings of destiny; those that he had carefully altered and prayed would suit his purpose, and followed the devil into the dark.

* * *

The sun could not shine through the darkness of ancient mist and magic. The black, twisting fog threaded up into the sky to create an eternal dusk. Wind moaned through the trees to lift the strips of cloth, to sing in the bells tied to each branch and twig. The soft cacophony sounded like the voices of the dead crying from beyond the grave.

He stood on the rim of the basin, overlooking the dirt and scorched grass, marveling at the turn of the earth. The place mocked him. It rang of the power that had slipped through his fingers. Shattered glass ground into the cracked, broken earth beneath his feet, winked as he shifted. It shimmered in the low light, fallen stars of folly and misfortune.

But it was not the rubble still echoing with his magic that drew his interest.

It was the midnight black hair blowing freely on the wind, mingling with dirt and glass. It was the tattered sleeves of a kimono, stained with dried blood. It was the bone beginning to show through the pale, beautiful face of his first creation. It was the fan that had fallen from her death grip, still lying at her side.

It was the sword through her stomach, stuck straight and proud that rooted his eyes to the middle of the valley.

He stepped off the edge of the basin and glided through the air, his feet touching the floor of the land with practiced ease. Slow, deliberate steps brought him to the wind demoness' dead body, already decomposing, rotting, and festering.

Juxtaposed against her beauty, the crumble and decay of time.

A long, pale finger stretched out and lovingly touched the side of her face, traced a path down her throat, her sternum, to the place where the sword rested.

Battered and old, of poor make and quality, devoid of any spells, any special identifying factor, it sat, thrust into her middle. Her body would bloat around the insufferable, evil intrusion. Her hair would tumble off with the wind, be caught in blades of grass, lost forever under stones. Her bones would turn to dust, mingle with the strata.

A pale hand lifted, gracefully curled fingers around the hilt. It was when he felt the strength of the metal flat catch along bones that his disconnect boiled into rage.

His greatest work of art felled by a lucky strike. His beauty dead at the hands of a weak weapon, an even more inadequate wielder.

Around his pale fingers blackness welled. The memory within steel was pulled to the surface.

Small, inexperienced hands. Fear, ineptitude, duty, a quest. A kinship between a battered sword and a tired girl.

A deep, crackling laugh echoed around him, crackling with fire, electricity and the memory faded. Blackness rolled, the air around him wavered as he bent, shoulders shaking.

Tiny little thing, unimaginable power, fate's child, _murderer_.

Her sword gleamed, his maniacal laugh thundered.

It had been the Protector who killed the demoness. It had been the girl child; the one he almost succeeded in killing, time after time, who unhinged all plots and plans.

Dust swirled under his feet, the sky turned darker, and still he laughed. Laughed until he wrenched the blade from the body, laughed into the darkness surrounding him grabbed hold of her remains and dragged it into the widening void within him. Laughed until his vision was unseeing and lost in black, until the world burned under his power.

When he resurfaced, Kagura's body was gone and tendrils of power were curling inside of his chest, his head, begging for more power, more, more, _more_-

He had lost many hours since pulling the sword from her body. Gazing skyward, careless, he thought that days might have passed as his sorcery had churned.

And now there was a shift of sorcery on the wind.

It was a faint power, but moving faster over the land, hurrying toward him.

Crimson eyes slid open and stared at the gently waving branches of dead trees. He waited, listening to the air hush, the rhythm of the earth die down.

Beyond the dark clouds night fell. Through the forest an adversary slunk, broke through the foliage to stand on the cusp of the basin. He was cloaked and hooded, but deep in the folds of fabric, two dark eyes glittered with keen interest. He hovered, watched the sallow, ebony covered being for signs of aggression before turning and striding along the lip of the land.

He moved, effortless but not careless. Guarded but at ease.

"I came looking for something," the voice within the hood called out. "Something small, nearly infinitesimal, phenomenally powerful." He paused, turned his head to look back at the obliterated, juxtaposed forest and the glinting of glass, mirror, the lingering stench of death. "Though it seems I may be late to collect what I wanted. The battle has already occurred and my chance has passed." Ambling steps led him on a slow trail around the basin. "Late," he repeated easily, "but it seems opportunity has not yet passed me by."

Stopping on the rim just above the demon he twitched aside his cloak to reveal a sword.

"Demon," the man acknowledged, deeply bowing his covered head.

Below, in the valley, a slow, vicious smile crawled across the fiend's wan face.

"Hunter," the smooth voice returned, full of lies and deceptions.

The figure of the hunter moved slightly, and the demon detected the sound of a dry laugh. "What providential circumstances that I should lose what I came for and find you instead. To think, I could have had _it_, the jewel, in my hand. And to think," he added, a sly tone creeping into his heedless voice, "it might have just as easily been yours."

A hand rose, pushed down the dark fabric around the face. In the pale light, an animalistic grin flashed. The demon remained motionless, as unaffected as the other man, though the differences between them were palpable and powerful, churning a warning beneath the surface of control.

"It might still be yours," the Hunter announced as he resumed his pacing. The demon tracked him with his eyes, kept still and silent, inscrutable against the dark earth. "The possibilities in this world, I have found, are endless. So, you see, it is not too late for either of us to gain that we seek."

The Hunter crouched low, drew a lazy finger along the crumbling dirt edge of land. "Because while I find the jewel to be a fascinating object, one that any being seeking power would crave, I would gladly surrender it to a being- a creature- that could truly manipulate its power. For I am a mere sorcerer and my abilities are limited in comparison to… others."

He laughed, brushed dirt off his hands and regarded the demon with a cool look of calculation. Crimson eyes narrowed with probing curiosity, black sorcery sparked dangerously.

"Because you see," the Hunter continued, standing once more, laying a hand upon his sword hilt, where a mirror and gem danced on ribbon, "the jewel is the link between us. You want it and I want those who carry it."

"The girl," the multi-toned voice broke in abruptly.

A shrug and a slow smile. " The girl perhaps, the others for certain. Three sorcerers. A half-breed. A warlord." The Hunter looked off into the trees, his dark brow drawing down.

"The Warlord will never join your cause."

The sorcerer nodded absently and continued to eye the dead, waving branches of the trees. "I know this. With him I seek revenge. Not an alliance. His companions will be offered a chance to join my clan of course. If they resist…" He trailed off and the wind picked up, moaned through the creaking woods.

The Hunter sighed lowly, and effortlessly cast off the tension. He faced the demon again, but cast a causal eye to the sky, perused the opposite side of the valley.

"I was sent after them to find their trail, to track them. This duty is not of my choosing, though I believe it will have its benefits. I am not a fool, Demon. But I think you might believe that I am. Can you sense my craving for power? You must, for who else but a fool would wander so carelessly near you, would address you with such neglect?"

His hand moved slowly and a finger toyed with the mirror and gem attached to his sword hilt. "It is not a downfall to desire more power. If I remember the regaling of tales correctly, you are of this same mind."

The dark spirit remained silent and the man continued, rubbing a hand along his chin in contemplation. "And, as I made my way here, catching waves of your power, I knew this, that you and I shared this ideal. I thought, 'the warlord will never join with me, but his enemy might'. After all," he added in dark undertones, his congenial smile gleaming in the dark, "we have so much in common, you and I, Onigumo."

Though the Demon did not move, the world shifted to accommodate him. The sky darkened beyond the clouds, the wind died.

"I know what you are thinking," the Hunter announced sharply. His declaration bounced around the valley floor and up into the sky, "You do not require alliances. You are thinking of killing me and absorbing my power. You could quite easily. I would crumple before your power."

He continued, voice weighted with import, "But loyalty is easily bought and our desires are near the same."

Unsettled, static, quiet settled.

"You are thinking that by offering this union, I am betraying my duty. But I am not, Demon. It is my master who betrays his sorcerers. What will he do with the power of the Shikon Jewel? He will hoard it. He will kill those who oppose him. He cannot end the Warlord. There is only one who can. Only one who can command armies, rule the land just as it was centuries before. He is the fool, the traitor. But not I. I am here to help you. To prove my willing alliance by offering you your enemies."

There was a breath, a movement, far away and on another plane, like a gathering of momentum.

"For power," the demon asked, violent gaze strained upon the body of his first creation, "greater than any could imagine. What would you do for it?"

"Anything."

Onigumo turned his face up once more and reached within his cloak, grasped his sword, drew it in a clean arc of dark and foul energy. The Hunter stepped away from the edge, threw his arms up before his face. Monstrous, twisted, wretched. The air burned under the agony of his sorcery.

Laughter, fathomless beneath the roar of cursed necromancy, rolled and blended, thundered until the ground shook. The creature's head cocked, fixed the Hunter with unblinking crimson eyes. His left hand relaxed its hold on the battered sword, let it drop vertical into the ground. A finger crooked, beckoned and seduced the sorcerer.

"If you wish for power you shall prove your worth. Show me our desires are the same; prove to me your allegiance, your thirst for more. Tell me the secrets I need to know, show the way to the jewel."

The Hunter moved with steady purpose, unaffected by the power. At the edge of the basin once more, he halted firmly. With great ease he lifted his eyes from the weapon that called him and met the Demon's eyes. The dirt began to crumble at his feet and the basin began to slide. The Hunter held steady the inhuman, soulless eyes; let his own magic rise in return.

Onigumo, depraved, corrupt, more so than ever before, asked in a voice that radiated the power running through him, dissolving the land and eating at the trees, "Your name, Hunter, so I a may know the man who will bring upon Sesshoumaru's defeat."

The Hunter reached within his robes, unsheathed his sword.

Firm against the wind licking the skin from his bones he whispered into the shrieking gale, "Hitomi Kagewaki."

And Hitomi Kagewaki stepped off the edge-

And into the black, burning the world with corruption and deceit.

* * *

There was a man kneeling, a sword in his hands. He was bent under the weight of darkness, eyes to the dirt. His hands slipped out from underneath the blade and he bowed his head to the ground.

It was too dark to see. Matter was moving through the air, whipping past at incalculable speeds. But there was a void of dark, a glimmer of a weapon, and something unstoppable was moving, turning, and shrieking.

Vermillion eyes and gnashing teeth, claws and the edges of blades.

"Jesus!" Kagome jerked awake, eyes flying open to see a startled Inuyasha crouched across from her.

"Hey," Inuyasha reached for her shoulder and gripped it tightly as a worried expression twisted his mouth and drew lines across his forehead. "Hey, hey, look at me. Look at me. Are you alright?"

Kagome's gaze darted around wildly before settling on his face. Behind him there was sunlight outside the ring of shady tree cover. It was daylight. She was safe. She could hear Aeron and Suzu talking nearby. Sesshoumaru was in the distance, pacing, catching the white rays with pale features.

"Jesus," Kagome repeated, winded. She collapsed forward into her hands and rubbed trembling fingers over her sweat stained face.

"Kagome? Kagome, are you ok?"

Inuyasha was sounding increasingly alarmed. He shook her shortly and she had to tear her hands away from her face and grip his wrists to make him stop.

"I'm fine. Inuyasha, I'm fine. It's ok. It was a nightmare. I'm ok." It took a few steadying moments before she could breathe evenly and look him in the eye. "Sorry." She tried for a smile and wound up grimacing instead.

"What's wrong?" He pulled his hands from hers and set them back on her shoulders, gentler this time.

"Just a nightmare," she managed around the lump in her throat.

"A vision or a nightmare?"

She laughed colorlessly and met his stern, concerned gaze. "Both. It was both."

The man glanced over his shoulder and into the distance. "Think you should tell Sesshoumaru?"

Kagome vacillated between curling up in a ball and stiffly getting to her knees to bring more bad news to the warlord. After a pained minute in which Inuyasha's hands became uncomfortably tight on her arms, she accepted his help and rose to her feet.

"Want me to walk with you?' he offered gently as a hand on her elbow steadied her weak legs. Charmed, grateful, Kagome patted his hand and shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

She steeled frayed nerves, sucked in a breath, squared her shoulders, and stepped out of the shade and into the sunshine. Inuyasha watched her go, a distracted, darkly contemplative emotion worming across his face. He angled his body to turn and walk away, but his eyes refused to move, watched the young woman struggle up a moderate incline and reach for the hand of the warlord. Watched as she was ushered into the protective sphere the warrior offered. Watched as a clawed hand lay gently upon her back. Watched as golden eyes darted over her ashen face.

It was a physical ache, the heartbreak. How easily Inuyasha remembered her, his lost priestess, as he gazed at his brother and the woman he protected. How quickly she came back to him when he yearned from the outside in.

How strange to see redemption in the warlord, in the most unexpected of places.

The rosary around his neck burned, was heavy with memory, heavy like chains.

And he didn't touch her, except for that hand on her back. And while he knew they talked of important, frightening things, he could see underneath. And he could see the way the proud warrior cradled her without touching, kept her close without pulling.

Inuyasha turned, shut his eyes, drew in the steady breath that told him, yes, _they_ could do this, _they_ could survive, _they_ would have the chance that was stolen from him-

And blinked away the sunshine to catch Aeron, grim and determined, lounging against a tree, staring with intensity that rivaled Inuyasha's. It was an omniscient gaze, one full of the black future, the knowledge that clairvoyance brought.

Inuyasha had seen it before in Kagome's eyes.

He passed slowly in front of Aeron, eyeing him dangerously, disbelievingly. Because, _god damn it_, the more secrets there were the weaker they would become. And he couldn't hear it, that they weren't going to survive this journey.

Aeron nodded toward Kagome. "What did she dream about?"

Inuyasha paused, glanced over his shoulder, looked back at Aeron again. He shrugged halfheartedly and swallowed hard.

"I don't know."

Aeron's expression grew infinitely harsher. "Hm," he intoned under his breath, and his good hand tapped the knotted wood of the staff lying across his knees.

"Is there something we should know?" Inuyasha queried lowly.

Aeron finally removed his penetrating gaze from the couple in the distance, turned it to the warrior hovering over him.

"Maybe."

The two men stared, unseeing at the horizon where long grass blew, where a thicket of trees sprouted, where the future looked upon her Protector with weary forbearance.

"Don't," Inuyasha said with abrupt harshness, "don't start doing this. Don't start thinking it's the end, because it's not. I've seen all this before. I've watched it happen, a different story, a different time. Don't you climb upon a pedestal and hold a foreseen dark future above me. You don't get to give up," he snapped with real vehemence, "because we have a job to do." He thrust his chin at Sesshoumaru and Kagome. "You aren't giving up on her. She didn't lose faith in you. So you aren't allowed to sink into despair. We can't afford it. Are you a mage or aren't you? You have to decide now."

Aeron stared, shocked, stunned into silence. The worn desperation was washed clear off his slack face.

"I have to decide right now?" he asked with a humorous eyebrow raise.

Inuyasha didn't return the smile, but stared levelly. Slowly, the incredulity disappeared from Aeron's dark eyes and he was distressed once more, though less so than before.

A gentle breeze blew hot, stifling air between them. The tree overhead whistled pleasantly. Somewhere near, the insects began to buzz.

"I'm a mage," he finally responded, "and I'm not giving up."

"Good," Inuyasha announced coolly and pushed up and away from the tree.

Aeron watched him go and whispered to the summer air, "But she might be giving up."

The sounds of the insects surged, and drowned out his words.

* * *

It was nearing night. The sun was still on the horizon, a deep red orange glow against the black and purple dusk. Kagome could no longer make Sesshoumaru out against the dark landscape. Distant and cold, ever the leader, making sacrifices in the hopes they would all survive.

She chanced a glance over her shoulder and saw Aeron wipe his brow with the sleeve of his robe. He was grey and dark lines had made a home beneath his dull eyes. Though his hand was freed from poison, the initial curse had done a fair share of damage to his fingers and hand. He was struggling not to show it, but she could see it in the way he held himself, in the grey complexion that wouldn't leave his pinched face.

There was an edge to him that she hadn't seen since the days in the museum, days where they had both wandered in repetitive circles as they tried to find the meaning of life.

He was struggling up a steep incline littered with loose rocks when Kagome finally turned and went to him, his masculinity be damned. She was tired of watching him wrestle with his injury, and his magic, and whatever other dark things were going on in his head. And, Jesus, didn't they all need a little help every once in awhile anyway?

She teetered for a moment as earth and rock slipped down the hill. But then she was grabbing his arm in a firm grasp, carefully slinging it over her shoulders. Wary of his hand she grasped his elbow and together they continued up the incline.

He grunted unhappily, but leaned into her.

Sweat dotted her brow. He was heavy and her short strides were little match for his. "How's your hand?" she ground out through clenched teeth.

Apparently he still possessed enough black humor to laugh, although it sounded caustic and bitter. "Never better," he shot back, sarcasm barbing sharply in her ear.

Kagome slanted a glance at him, but his face was shadowed, turned away from her. For a few long, tense minutes the only sound was his wooden staff thumping a rhythm against the ground.

When the moon disappeared behind a lone cloud, Aeron murmured, "My hand isn't too great right now."

Kagome pressed her lips together and waited, kept her eyes in the uneven, grassy trail. The arm around her shoulders tensed slightly, squeezed, and wrapped a little tighter.

"I can't adequately channel magic through it. It's like a… like a dam around a river. The sorcery is there. It just can't get through the injury."

"Does it hurt?" she inquired softly. Up ahead there was a dim flicker of light, Suzu's magic. She had stopped at the edge of a thicket of trees.

"It aches. But not like a normal injury. It feels like my soul is scarred." He snorted and shook his head. "I can't explain it better than that."

Kagome shrugged as she adjusted her grip on his arm. "Oddly enough I think I know what you mean. When the Mage was trying to find out what I was he was awfully good at accidentally bruising my inner being. I wasn't really aware your very essence could hurt, but you know, I also wasn't aware that giant glass dragons existed, or that swords had personalities-"

"Or that warlords lived for centuries?" he cut in wryly.

Kagome laughed breathlessly, maybe a little desperately, and managed to mutter an agreement.

They were silent again, dying laughter drifting away on the sticky wind. How far down had they fallen that humor no longer cured the darkest parts of their lives?

"How bad is it?" Kagome asked, and as she did her eyes drifted shut. Because maybe if she blocked out the world, disregarded the inevitable answer… it would all go away.

He hardly paused before replying, "I- It's bad. It's bad, bad, terrible timing." He sounded beaten, his voice was gravely and hoarse. "Bad anyway you look at it, worse now. There was a reason Sesshoumaru needed a mage," he told her in his softest, most careful of voices. "He needs me- or, rather, he needs the Mage's power to help bring down the demon. I'm not much use to him if my full power can't be utilized."

They were closer to the trees now and she could just make out Inuyasha's outline and the faint luminescence that signified the warlord.

With startling clarity, she recalled Sesshoumaru's retelling of history, his defeat of the demon, and the fateful ramifications of sealing away the devil himself.

"It took a great deal of sorcery to defeat Onigumo," she stated softly, turning her eyes away from the ancient warriors amongst the forest.

"It was dangerous, almost killed them all." He tapped his temple with his good hand and the metal rings flashed with faint golden light. "They aren't my memories, but I can see fleeting glimpses of the past, the battle that changed everything. As powerful as Sesshoumaru was, as great and phenomenally colossal as his blade was, capturing the demon's soul and throwing it into the underworld was not simple. It was not plunging in the sword and watching the end unfold."

Kagome wished it was that simple. Wished that the story Sesshoumaru had told her, that fateful night she had first met him, was true. She had never asked for the truth behind his tale. It would have been naïve to suppose the legend surrounding the Warlord, the Mage, and the Forger was absolute truth. She had known without Sesshoumaru's telling that it was a condensed, theatrical version of reality. But it had been beautiful and simple and tragic and had served to prompt her into action. That was what the Warlord had wanted, what she eventually wanted too.

She hadn't asked about the real history and he hadn't given it. Even when adventures lost their luster, when death began to creep into the fairytales, she hadn't sought answers. How many bloody battles had it taken to subdue the depraved beast? How many men had died? How much had Sesshoumaru sacrificed to end it all?

Kagome turned to him to say- oh, god, how could she say she was sorry for this, sorry he was part of it, sorry he had become entangled because of her, sorry-

But Aeron was slowing abruptly, jarring her harshly. She looked upwards and over his tattered sleeve to see Sesshoumaru watching them with measured intensity. His eyes were over bright and reflective, caught the faint flickering of Suzu's O-fuda. He looked animalistic and cutting, as if he could slice them open through sight alone.

Aeron's arm slipped awkwardly from her shoulders. Kagome almost laughed, but thought that maybe Aeron's fear had more to do with his incapacitated hand than any male posturing or imposed possessiveness. She tossed a soft, reassuring smile at Sesshoumaru, and apparently satisfied with that, he walked away and crouched to the ground, pressed his hand to the earth and threaded magic within. He was listening for enemies, making double sure they had enough time to rest.

The sight only filled her with more apprehension.

They entered into the safe copse of trees and it wasn't long before Aeron had rid himself of his pack and laid the stave on the ground. He slid down onto the moist ground, leaned his head back and forced a grin in her direction.

"Don't look so worried," he placated unconvincingly. "Sesshoumaru has a plan and this time around there are more people on his side."

Kagome carefully lowered to sit on a knotted tree root, discarding her tattered bag as she did.

"Why _do_ we need a mage?"

The man looked up sharply, and glowered at her for a few moments before shaking his head and passing a hand over his brow. There was a deprecating little smile on his face as he spoke.

"Sesshoumaru needs a mage to open the gates of the afterlife because he's going to have his hands full with that sword and even a warlord can't bind a soul to the depths of death and open a portal to the demon's destiny. Too few hands you see," he jested, holding up his own crippled appendage.

Kagome looked away disapprovingly, and plucked dry grass from the dirt at her feet. "Because it's not as simple as a sword and an end," she repeated his words to her knees.

"It never has been."

Inuyasha stepped over the root and sat down on the ground, unsheathing his sword and holding it up before their eyes. Half mesmerized, she watched the black glimmer of moonlight glance off the weapon.

"Onigumo is nearly as powerful as Sesshoumaru. Power is unpredictable. Magic, sorcery? There aren't any rules. But the dark arts, the most depraved necromancy is boundless. It's twisted. It's difficult explaining depthless power unless you possess it, but describing what Onigumo possesses…" he trailed off, lowered the sword. "Stopping him isn't the same as killing him. It's obliterating all that indefinable magic, binding it so that it can't escape immediately. It's only to buy time anyway. He'll find a way to come back or someone else will take his place, take his power, take his title. Only this time," he continued, "he's found new ways to survive and channel his power."

He laughed bitterly, "He's made a sword. But it's _never_ as simple as that. It will house unspeakable abilities, wrong and wretched things. It will be incomprehensible."

Kagome looked up as Suzu and Sota maneuvered through the quiet dark to join them. The Mage's daughter absently threw the burning O-fuda within their makeshift circle and suddenly they were all lit with a haunting glow. On the outskirts of the light the shadows invaded and as her eyes adjusted, Kagome was Sesshoumaru approach on silent feet.

"Onigumo's new weapon could be a terrible inconvenience to us," Sota interjected softly.

Inuyasha snorted derisively and threaded his hands together behind his head. "If that isn't the understatement of the year."

Sota raised his eyes, but remained quiet, rubbing a hand across his lips as he thought.

"How will it be done then? Although the unexpected is always expected, it is imperative that we do whatever is necessary to confine him to the afterlife. If he has a sword with enough power to rival Sesshoumaru's then it is highly likely the only useful individuals will be Aeron and Sesshoumaru himself," Suzu explained levelly, carefully removing each of her weapons from hidden folds of clothing and laying them out before the light. There was steady calculation upon her face and her fingers drifted knowingly from blade edge to staff end. Kagome could almost see the plans of how she would cut and kill form behind her eyes.

"There is little that can be accomplished by anyone else." Sesshoumaru's low voice wafted over them, and their eyes rose to make out his tall form against the trees. "He is an even match for me. It would be a waste of both energy and life for anyone else to engage him in battle. But it can be assumed you will not stand idly by. He may have made more alliances with weaker demon clans. The Wind spirit dynasty was a mere taste of the power he could summon."

Kagome shifted uncomfortably, recalling her vague dream of swords and shadows, a man kneeling beneath the towering devil.

"I will fight Onigumo and I will bind his soul with the sword, send it to the underworld. The mage will open the gates and help me dispose of his power. You will protect him, or each other, or fight the enemies the demon has summoned. If you die I cannot help you, grappling with the demon's soul is of too much importance to bring you back from the brink."

His words sunk in, heavy, and they were painfully silent in the aftermath of his speech. It seemed enough explanation for the others because they raised no more questions, and in the unhappy quiet, Sesshoumaru drifted farther away from their camp.

Kagome watched him go, immobilized and distant. But she could feel her heartbeat down to her fingertips, reverberating throughout her head.

There was some irony in this, she was sure. She was traveling with the one creature on earth who could both give and take life and he wouldn't be able to save anyone this time. This one time, when it mattered most, when they all quietly expected to die to save a world that knew no better.

Why was life the payment for the death of the nefarious beast? Why did one negate the other?

God, weren't they in this to stop the suffering and evil? How was dying, without the possibility of Sesshoumaru's saving power, even fair? How had their lives become so insignificant?

Hollowly, because nightmares of death were more of a reality now then ever before, she asked, remote and strangely calm, "Has he ever resurrected anyone with the power of the blade?"

Inuyasha's answer was hushed and nearly swallowed by the faint sigh of the leaves in the breeze above.

"No. He has only killed."

She swallowed hard, blinked rapidly against the sting in her eyes, tried to discern the warrior from the shifting shadows.

"Why not?"

A lull, gentle to protect her from honesty, "There was no reason to save anyone, no one to save."

Her vision dimmed, fell back in time, thought of the first protector, the girl he had failed to save. Shaking fingers dug into the dirty material of her pants, gripped until she lost all feeling. There was revelation crowding around, hovering on the indefinable rim of words.

The universe had fallen quiet, and words slipped, unhindered, from her lips.

"What does it cost him to raise such power?"

Inuyasha turned and gazed up at her, but she had eyes only for the dark and the history it nestled within its wings.

"It takes everything. Everything that makes him."

His words rushed in, like water freed from a dam. Overwhelmed under an onslaught of memory, visions, tides of emotion, Kagome burned away.

Because suddenly, she understood, suddenly everything _fit_. And it was almost a relief to know _why_. To know why fate had found her, to know why it sent her dreams.

To understand why the warlord kept her, even if he didn't.

It was a simple answer, a metaphor that she could understand. Because Inuyasha couldn't explain the relinquishment of power to her, because it was too much for her to comprehend.

And, god, it was all falling into place now, the _why_. Maybe not the _how_, how the future would unfold, how everything would end, but this, this was true and real and so heartbreaking that she rose, brushed off Inuyasha's questioning hand and forged out into the darkness.

Sesshoumaru gave up everything he was to end everything he wasn't.

Hadn't he said it all in simple, symbolic ways? Hadn't he finished the demon once, broken a promise to a girl, stained his honor, watched her die? Hadn't he lost his power, his sword, to win?

Hadn't he given up all that was his namesake, his bloodline, to watch the devil fade away?

He had, he had, _he had_.

And, Jesus, here they were again, a different time, different people, the same situation, the same sacrifices to be made.

She stumbled over the uneven, dark ground, tried not to collapse under the weight of understanding. She _could_ comprehend it now, why it was her, why the sword had found her, why she was the fucking Shikon Jewel.

She existed to help him win.

Kagome existed to end, to die; to save the world like she had promised Sesshoumaru she would. Everything he was now, wrapped up in her. Everything to give up, everything to lose.

She didn't know how the end would happen, only that it was right, that it felt genuine and clear and terrible and bittersweet and was too much to ask of her-

But it had always been her, the thing pushing him past his limits, collecting bravery like medals, preparing for an end no one could see.

Because the warlord was not meant to fall off a pedestal for a girl.

Because they had been an accident, Kagome and Sesshoumaru.

Because the disgraced and forgotten ruler, consigned to history and ageing texts, wasn't meant to have her, and she wasn't meant to live.

He was at the top of a small knoll, facing the wind. Her heart thundered, overflowed, and somewhere inside she was screaming the unjust impression of destiny on a creature that deserved redemption more than she deserved to live.

She made it to him somehow, and swayed unsteadily. He turned sharply, fixed striking, unblinking eyes on the girl fate had made. There was a crease between his brow, growing severe, mapping the spread of worry and displeasure.

He looked ready to lie to her again and offer words of reassurance she no longer needed. Maybe he was going to say something profound, maybe he would have imparted some knowledge that would have changed her forever, maybe he would have asked her for the truth, maybe, maybe.

But she wasn't interested in maybe, or perhaps, or if, only in living and breathing, and taking a last chance here or there.

So she strode forward with full, unstoppable purpose, reached up with her hands, stood on her tiptoes, and pulled his face down for a kiss.

Deep and gracious, the press of lips, sweetened with the smell of the grass, and the sound of the leaves, and the blackness of the sky, and the pale glow of the moon.

And she hadn't meant it to taste like goodbye, hadn't meant to pour in resignation and revelation. She hadn't meant to catch a weeping sob in her chest, or reveal the trembling of her fingers against his face. But she must have, because he grasped her chin with careful fingers and pulled away.

Pinned beneath a frightening, deliberate gaze, she could only stare up at him, trembling, aching, longing, wishing.

And as it so often was, truth was found in the things unsaid.

She shrugged helplessly and a sad little smile twisted her lips. The deep, dark parts of him softened at the sight, and large, rough fingers brushed dark waves away from her pale face. He drew her close with a hand curled at her nape, and she pressed against him, arms wrapped in a secure hold between swords and silk, she felt a kiss at the crown of her head.

And it was enough to right the momentary madness and loss.

Steady, breathing in and out. She closed her eyes for a long, countless second, and when they opened the moon seemed brighter, the night darker, and the warrior king nearer now than ever before.

If she died tomorrow, she wanted him to know she meant it, she was sorry, she was grateful.

Smaller fingers disentangled his capable hand. Turned over, palm up, she pressed her lips against his palm, and smiled away the fear. Back again, the Kagome with an iron heart, almost selfless, the girl who believed a legend and promised to save the world.

He studied her intensely, but he wasn't as sharp as he had been in the daylight. Here in the dark he was hidden from the eyes of enemies, the hopes and despairs of those who followed him.

He reached across the distance as she eased away; let his fingers drift lazily across the planes of her cheek.

"You should rest," he rumbled from somewhere deep in his chest. And that place was reserved for her and her alone, that possessive, secret site.

She smiled then, real and true, bright and young like she was once in memories forgotten.

"I think I'll stay here," she answered softly.

She thought she saw him smile as he made a quiet, approving sound in his throat.

They watched the moon and let the night hide them from their sins.


End file.
